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Dessert

A Plain Sweet Souffle

A light, sweet soufflé made with flour or ground rice, milk, sugar, lemon rind, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

A Plain Sweet Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix flour or ground rice with ½ cup of milk to form a smooth batter.

  2. Gradually add 1 cup of milk while stirring over medium heat for 10 minutes.

  3. Stir in sugar and lemon rind, then mix for 3 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture into a bowl and beat in the egg yolks gradually.

Bake and serve

  1. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Butter a baking pan and gently fold in the egg whites.

  3. Pour the souffle mixture into the pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Serve immediately after removing from the oven.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour or ground rice
Thickens the milk into a stable base that holds the soufflé's structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and set during baking to give the soufflé body.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it bakes.
Milk
Provides moisture and liquid that the starch thickens into the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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