Skip to main content
Dessert

A Souffle of Ginger

A light, airy ginger soufflé made with milk, cream, eggs, preserved ginger, and brandy, served with white wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

A Souffle of Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk and cream with lemon peel, cinnamon, and sugar for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Melt the butter in a 2-quart saucepan.

  4. Stir in enough flour to absorb the butter. Cook the mixture until it leaves the bottom of the pan.

  5. Remove from heat.

Make the batter

  1. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring until well mixed to form a thick batter.

  2. Incorporate the cooled milk and cream mixture, mixing well to prevent separation.

  3. Fold in the preserved ginger, brandy, and nutmeg.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a savoy cake mold generously with butter using a brush. Decorate the mold with dried cherries.

  2. Pour the soufflé mixture into the mold.

  3. Place the mold in a saucepan with boiling water halfway up the mold. Cover the saucepan. Place hot charcoal on top.

  4. Cook slowly for 1 hour.

  5. Remove the mold 10 minutes before serving to firm up the soufflé.

  6. Run a knife around the edges to loosen it before turning out.

  7. Serve with white wine 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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and lift, setting the soufflé as they cook.
Flour
Absorbs the melted butter and thickens the base so the batter holds together.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and helps the base hold its shape.
Milk and cream
Add moisture and richness, giving the custard a soft, tender texture.
Preserved ginger
Adds aroma, flavour and a bit of chewy texture throughout the soufflé.

The step that matters

Add the cooled milk and cream mixture gradually. Mixing the cooled liquid in slowly and thoroughly keeps the batter smooth and emulsified, preventing the butter and liquid from separating. Hot liquid can also start cooking the eggs unevenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, cinnamon, sugar, butter, flour, 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes