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Dessert

Yanilla Souffle

A light, airy dessert made from a butter‑flour‑milk base folded with egg yolks and beaten egg whites, sweetened with sugar and vanilla.

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 ↓

Yanilla Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until well combined.

  3. Add the milk and cook until the mixture leaves the sides of the pan clean.

  4. Remove from heat and add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Fold and cook

  1. Stir in the caster sugar and fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

  2. Steam the mixture for about 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Turn onto a hot dish 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

Egg whites
Whipped to a stiff foam, they trap air that lifts the souffle as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the base into a custard-like structure.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a stable base that holds the air.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs enrich.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and softness in the base.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that makes the souffle rise. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing out of the mixture before cooking.

Swap the vanilla

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

  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, 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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