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Dessert

Apricot Souffle

A light, airy dessert made with apricot pulp, apricot juice, sugar, and beaten egg whites, steamed in a souffle tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Apricot Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Stir in the apricot pulp, apricot juice, and sugar until combined.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolks.

Assemble and cook

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Fold the egg whites into the apricot mixture gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a papered souffle tin.

  4. Steam for 60 to 75 minutes until firm.

Serve

  1. Turn out and serve with thickened apricot liquor, custard, or apricot 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + apricottop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped into stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help set the soufflé as it firms.
Flour
Thickens the butter base so it can hold the whipped egg whites.
Apricot pulp
Adds bulk, moisture, and apricot flavour to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and balances the tartness of the apricot.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the apricot mixture. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped egg whites. Stirring or beating deflates the foam, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the apricot

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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