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Dessert

Orange Souffle

A light orange‑flavored custard made with soaked crumbs, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, and orange rind, baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Orange Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Boil the milk and pour it over the crumbs, letting them soak while preparing the other ingredients.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the egg yolks and one egg white to the butter mixture and beat well.

  3. Grate or finely chop half the orange rind and mix it into the batter.

  4. Fold in the soaked crumbs gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until set.

  3. Garnish with glace cherries before serving.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks and white set the batter into a light, airy structure as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air that helps the souffle rise and gives a tender texture.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in hot milk, they absorb liquid and give the souffle body and moisture.
Cake crumbs
Soaked in hot milk, they add moisture and a soft, tender crumb to the batter.
Caster sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps trap air and adds sweetness and browning.
Orange
Its rind adds bright citrus aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the soaked crumbs. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg and butter mixture. Stirring vigorously knocks out that air, so the souffle bakes up flatter and denser.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, sugar, butter, egg, 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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