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Omelet Souffle

A light, airy omelet soufflé folded over jam, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Omelet Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the egg yolks and sugar together.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Gently fold the flour, vanilla, and whipped egg whites into the yolk mixture using a metal spoon.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered omelet pan lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake for about 8 minutes.

  3. Turn the omelet out onto sugared paper, spread hot jam in the center, fold over, and serve on lace paper.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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 to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the omelet its light, puffed structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, and set during baking to give the omelet a tender body.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilize the creamed yolks and whipped whites.
All-purpose flour
Provides a small amount of structure so the folded batter holds its shape while baking.

The step that matters

Folding the whites into the yolk mixture. Folding gently preserves the air bubbles in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the omelet dense and flat instead of light and soufflé-like.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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