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Omelette Souffles

A light, airy omelette soufflé made with eggs, arrowroot, sugar, lemon, butter, and optional orange‑flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Omelette Souffles

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  2. Mix the yolks with arrowroot, sugar, lemon peel, and lemon zest or orange-flower water.

  3. Beat the mixture until smooth.

  4. Whip the egg whites until frothy.

  5. Gently fold the egg whites into the yolk mixture.

Cook and bake

  1. Heat the butter in an omelet pan until it begins to boil.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan.

  3. Stir gently until it starts to firm up.

  4. Transfer the omelet to a small circular dish.

  5. Place the dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 minutes to ½ hour until puffed up.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  2. Serve immediately.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, and yolks add richness and set the structure as the omelet cooks.
Arrowroot or potato flour
Starch thickens the yolk mixture and helps it hold its puffed shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the omelet and helps stabilise the whipped structure.
Butter
Fat for the pan that adds richness and browns the base of the omelet.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the yolk mixture. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the omelet will not puff in the oven. Fold gently, keeping the batter light.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, arrowroot, sugar, lemon, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, arrowroot, sugar, lemon, 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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