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Dessert

Lemon Souffle

A light lemon custard baked in a buttered mold, served with a lemon sugar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the potato starch and caster sugar.

  3. Add the milk and grated lemon peel, stirring until thickened.

  4. Beat the egg yolks for 30 seconds, then gradually mix into the pudding.

Assemble and steam

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered pint mold, tying a band of buttered paper around the top.

  3. Place the mold in a pot of boiling water, ensuring the water reaches halfway up the mold.

  4. Simmer gently for about 20 minutes, or until firm enough to turn out.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, boil the sugar in cold water for 10 minutes, then add the strained lemon juice.

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the soufflé and give it its rise and airy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a tender, custardy structure when cooked.
Potato starch
Thickens the milk base into a smooth pudding that holds the soufflé's structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that is thickened and enriched into the soufflé mixture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the base taste rounded and feel smooth.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that makes a soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air from collapsing, so the pudding stays light instead of dense.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, milk, lemon, egg, sauce. 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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