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Dessert

Semolina Souffle

A steamed or baked dessert made from semolina, milk, sugar, butter, eggs, and lemon rind.

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 ↓

Semolina Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the semolina base

  1. Mix the semolina with a little milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk in a pan with the grated lemon rind.

  3. Pour the boiling milk onto the semolina and return to the pan, stirring until it boils.

  4. Add the sugar and butter, cooking for about five minutes.

Add the eggs

  1. Allow the mixture to cool, then separate the yolks from the eggs and add them to the mixture.

  2. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. Prepare a soufflé dish by greasing it, then pour in the mixture.

  2. Cover with greased paper and steam for one hour or bake in a buttered dish for one hour.

  3. Serve with marmalade sauce.

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. Semolina + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Sugar + semolinatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites trap air for lift, and yolks enrich the set custard structure.
Semolina
Starch thickens the milk into a body that holds the soufflé together.
Milk
Liquid that cooks the semolina into a smooth, thick base.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, tender texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the mixture tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whisked to stiff peaks hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating it leaves a dense result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, semolina, butter, egg. 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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