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Dessert

Small Sugar Souffles

Small sugar souffles are sweet, airy balls made from egg white, sugar, and water, baked until firm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Small Sugar Souffles

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Whisk the egg white to a very firm froth.

  2. Gradually add the sifted sugar, mixing until well combined.

  3. Dust your fingers with a little sifted sugar and roll the mixture into small balls, no larger than a nut.

Shape and bake

  1. Moisten the tops of the souffles lightly with cold water using your finger or a pastry brush.

  2. Place the souffles in small round paper cases or on sheets of paper.

  3. Bake in a very gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) for 16 to 30 minutes, checking for firmness.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg white
Whipped into a firm foam that gives the souffles their light, airy structure.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens and, combined with the foam, helps set the souffles' structure as they bake.

The step that matters

Whisking the egg white to a very firm froth. Egg white foam holds air only when it is whipped firmly enough. An underwhipped foam collapses, leaving dense souffles, so the froth must be stiff before the sugar is added.

“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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