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Dessert

Vanilla Souffle

A light, airy dessert made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla, steamed in a small mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Vanilla Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour and add the milk, cooking until it forms a ball around the spoon and leaves the sides of the pan clean.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then add the sugar and the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Fold and steam

  1. Gently fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

  2. Butter a small souffle mold with clarified butter, pour in the mixture, and cover with buttered paper.

  3. Steam gently for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn out and serve with wine or jam sauce.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites give the souffle its light, airy structure, while yolks enrich the base.
Flour
Forms a cooked paste with the butter and milk that gives the base body and holds the mixture together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the base, adding flavour and a tender texture.
Milk
Liquid that combines with the flour and butter to form a smooth, thick base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites are stiffly whipped to trap air, which lifts the souffle as it cooks. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out that air, leaving a dense result instead of a light one.

Swap the vanilla

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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