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Dessert

Cornflour Souffle

A light, airy dish made from cornflour, milk, lemon rind, eggs, and sweetener, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and honey are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,336 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Cornflour Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix the cornflour with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk in an earthenware stewpan with the lemon rind and sweeten to taste.

  3. When boiling, add the cornflour and stir until it boils again.

  4. Remove from heat for 1 minute.

  5. Let it boil up again three times.

  6. Remove from heat and take out the lemon peel.

Add eggs and bake

  1. Beat the egg yolks and add to the mixture.

  2. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them in.

  3. Pour into a buttered shallow fireproof dish and bake for about 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Serve immediately.

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 + honeytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  3. Lemon + honeytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

Cornflour
Thickens the milk into a stable custard base that holds the soufflé's structure.
Eggs
Egg whites trap air for lift, while yolks enrich the base and set it as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornflour thickens into a smooth custard.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites beaten to stiff peaks trap air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the mixture and leaves it flat.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, honey. 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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