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Dessert

Souffle Un Citron

A light lemon‑flavored souffle made with milk, sugar, eggs, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Souffle Un Citron

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk, sugar, and lemon zest together.

  2. In a bowl, mix a little cold milk with 2 tablespoons of flour until smooth.

  3. Pour the boiling milk mixture into the bowl, ensuring there are no lumps.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Boil, stirring rapidly, for 3-4 minutes.

  6. Beat in the egg yolks and lemon juice.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fold in the whipped egg whites.

  2. Grease a mold with butter.

  3. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  4. Bake or steam the souffle (without a cover) 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air for lift, and yolks enrich and set the custard structure.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds the airy egg whites without collapsing.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the flour thickens.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilise the custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the lemon custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped and folded in gently; overmixing deflates them, so the soufflé loses its rise and becomes dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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