Skip to main content
Main

Rice Soufflet

A baked rice soufflet flavored with lemon and optional orange flower water, finished with powdered sugar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Rice Soufflet

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 base

  1. Soak the rice and lemon peel in ½ pint of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Combine the soaked mixture with ¼ teaspoon salt.

  3. Gradually add 1 pint of new milk.

  4. Add the butter.

  5. Stir until it boils.

  6. Cook for 5 minutes.

  7. Let it cool.

Make the soufflé

  1. Mix in the beaten egg yolks and powdered sugar.

  2. Gently fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

  3. Shape the soufflet like a pyramid in a baking dish.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  5. Glaze with sifted powdered sugar while baking.

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. Rice + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  3. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  4. Rice + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to trap air, letting the soufflé rise and become light.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a tender, custardy texture.
Rice
Soaked and cooked into the milk to thicken the base and give body.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender mouthfeel to the base.
Potato flour
Helps thicken the base and gives it a more stable structure.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when whipped well; folding gently keeps that air in the mixture, so the soufflé rises. Stirring hard deflates it and it will not rise well.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, lemon, walnut, butter, egg, 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes