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Dessert

Orange Souffle

A custard-like dessert made with orange zest, marmalade, rose water, and eggs, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon 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 ↓

Orange Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix flour with cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add rose water, orange peel, and lemon peel; stir until it boils.

  3. Strain the mixture and sweeten to taste.

  4. Once cold, stir in orange marmalade.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the eggs and mix in brandy.

  2. Combine with the other ingredients and pour into a buttered mold.

  3. Place the mold in a saucepan of boiling water.

  4. Boil for 1 hour and 15 minutes without covering the mold.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Rose + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set and lighten the mixture, giving the souffle its structure as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving a soft, custard-like texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream so the base holds together before the eggs are added.
Orange marmalade
Adds sweetness and citrus flavour, with some body from its sugar and pectin.

The step that matters

Boil without covering the mold. Keeping the mold uncovered lets steam escape and the boiling water surround it evenly. The egg mixture cooks gently and sets without becoming watery or uneven.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, rose, lemon, sugar, egg, brandy):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, rose, lemon, sugar, egg, brandy. 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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