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Dessert

Arrowroot Souffle

A light, sweet soufflé made with arrowroot, milk, egg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and milk work together. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 817 recipes. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

Arrowroot Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold milk until smooth.

  2. Boil ½ pint of milk and pour it onto the arrowroot mixture.

  3. Return to the saucepan and boil for three minutes.

  4. Let it cool, then add the sugar and stir in the egg yolk.

Assemble and bake

  1. Beat the egg white to stiff peaks and gently fold it into the mixture.

  2. Bake in a buttered pie dish for ten minutes.

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. Arrowroot + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  4. Arrowroot + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk into a smooth, set base as it boils.
Egg
Egg white whipped to stiff peaks gives the souffle its light, risen structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the arrowroot thickens into a custard-like mixture.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the flavour of the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg white. Stiff egg white holds air that makes the souffle rise; stirring or deflating it during folding loses that air, so fold gently and keep the mixture's volume.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, 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.

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