Skip to main content
Breakfast

Omelette Soufflée

A light, airy omelette made with egg yolks, powdered sugar, lemon peel, and whipped egg whites, baked until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Omelette Soufflée

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix and beat the egg yolks with the powdered sugar and grated lemon peel until well combined.

  2. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until very stiff peaks form.

  3. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the yolk mixture until just combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until puffed and golden.

  2. 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 into stiff peaks, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body to the batter and help set the structure as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the yolks for a smooth base.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the yolk mixture. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Stirring or beating vigorously deflates the foam, so the soufflé will bake flat and dense instead of rising.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

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

More omelette soufflé recipes

Sweet 3 See all 114 →

You might also like

Rice GruelRice Gruel28 recipesPeptoned Milk GruelPeptoned Milk Gruel9 recipes