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Dessert

Semolina Soufflee

A steamed semolina dessert made with milk, sugar, lemon rind, egg yolks, and folded whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Semolina Soufflee

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle in the semolina and sugar, then add the thinly cut lemon rind.

  3. Stir until the mixture thickens, then remove the lemon peel.

  4. Let it cool slightly, then stir in the yolks of 3 eggs.

Assemble and steam

  1. Whip the whites of 4 eggs to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Grease a soufflé mold, pour in the mixture, and steam for 20 minutes.

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. Semolina + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Yolks thicken the base and whites whipped to stiff peaks lift the soufflé as it sets.
Semolina
Swells in hot milk and thickens the base, giving the soufflé body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina thickens into a custard.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the texture tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped whites. Whites deflate easily when overmixed or stirred too hard. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles that make the soufflé rise during steaming.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, semolina, sugar, egg. 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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