Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Potatoe Souffle
Ingredients
Directions
Make the base
In a skillet, combine potato flour, egg yolks, and enough cream, milk, or water to create a smooth mixture.
Add the butter and powdered sugar, then heat while stirring until thick enough to coat the spoon.
Allow the mixture to bubble once or twice, then remove from heat.
Assemble and bake
Whip the egg white until stiff peaks form, then gently fold it into the potato mixture.
Pour the mixture into a deep dish, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and place it over heat from both above and below.
Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the soufflé rises about 4 inches.
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.
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Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,456 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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
- Potato flour
- Forms the thick, starchy body that holds the soufflé together as it cooks.
- Egg yolks
- Add richness and help thicken the mixture into a smooth base.
- Egg white
- Whipped to stiff peaks, it traps air that lifts the soufflé as it rises.
- Butter
- Adds fat for a softer texture and richer flavour.
- Powdered sugar
- Sweetens the soufflé and adds a little browning at the surface.
The step that matters
Folding in the egg white. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whipped white intact. Those bubbles expand in the oven and give the soufflé its rise, so overmixing deflates it.
Swap the potato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, cream, butter, sugar):
- Leekfits better
- Chivefits better
- Arrowrootfits better
- Potatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, cream, butter, sugar. 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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