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Dessert

Apple Souffle in Paste

A puff pastry shell filled with stewed apples, lemon rind, sugar, and whipped egg whites, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Apple Souffle in Paste

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the shell

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a pie dish and cover it with puff paste.

  3. Bake the paste lightly, then remove the dish to form a shell.

Make the filling

  1. Pare, core, and stew the apples to a pulp.

  2. Place the apple pulp in the paste shell.

  3. Add the soft lemon rind and crushed sugar.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and heap them over the apple mixture.

  2. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until golden.

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. Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,551 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Apple + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Apples
Cook down to a pulp that forms the soft, sweet body of the filling.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and set into a light, airy topping.
Crushed loaf sugar
Sweetens the apple pulp and helps the topping brown as it bakes.
Puff paste
Bakes into a crisp, flaky shell that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks. Egg whites need to be whipped until they hold firm peaks so they trap air and stay light. Under-whipped whites collapse into a dense layer, while over-whipped whites turn grainy and lose their stretch.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Applethe original

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