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Dessert

Chesnut and Cheese Souffle

A light, airy souffle made with roasted chestnuts, eggs, butter, Parmesan, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Chesnut and Cheese Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the base

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

  2. Pound the roasted chestnuts until smooth.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and mix with the chestnuts, butter, Parmesan, lemon peel, nutmeg, Nepaul pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir in the milk until the mixture is creamy.

Bake and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the chestnut mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered souffle dish and bake until set and golden brown.

  3. Serve immediately 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Chestnut + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together180 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the base and whites, whipped to stiff peaks, provide the airy structure that lifts the soufflé.
Roasted chestnuts
Provide the main body, starch and sweet, nutty flavour of the soufflé base.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and salty depth, and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the base, giving a softer, smoother texture.
Milk
Loosens the chestnut mixture to a creamy consistency and adds moisture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped to stiff peaks. Folding gently keeps that air in the batter; stirring or overmixing deflates it, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, parmesan cheese, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, milk):

  1. Walnutfits better
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, parmesan cheese, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, milk. 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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