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Dessert

Lemon Souffle

A baked lemon custard made with potato flour, butter, milk, sugar, egg yolks, and beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Lemon 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.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, mix potato flour and butter over medium heat until smooth.

  2. Gradually add milk, starting with a little, then the rest, stirring well.

  3. Add sugar with lemon zest and salt; heat until it thickens, stirring frequently.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in egg yolks one at a time.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a prepared crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.

  3. Serve glazed or dusted with powdered sugar.

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

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help set the custard as it cooks.
Potato flour
Thickens the milk base so it holds the whipped whites.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the base, which thickens when heated.
Sugar
Sweetens the soufflé and adds body to the base.
Butter
Adds richness and smooths the starch mixture.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites. Whites deflate if stirred hard. Fold gently with a spatula, cutting down through the mixture, so the air bubbles that make the soufflé rise stay intact.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, sugar, lemon, 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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