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Potato Souffle

A baked potato dish with a fluffy filling of mashed potatoes, milk, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

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

  2. Clean the potatoes thoroughly and bake them until tender.

  3. Cut a small round piece from the top of each potato and scoop out the insides without damaging the skin.

Make the filling

  1. Mash the potato insides with a little butter and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  2. Add 2 cups of milk to the mashed potatoes and bring to a boil.

  3. Whip the egg whites until frothy and fold them into the potato mixture while it boils.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the potato skins with the mixture and place them back in the oven.

  2. Bake until golden and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

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

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they lighten the filling and help it puff and set as it bakes.
Potatoes
Provide the starchy body of the filling and the shell that holds it while baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed potato, giving a smoother, creamier filling.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel in the mashed potato.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the potato mixture. Whipped egg whites trap air that lifts the filling. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the foam, so the souffle rises less and turns dense.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Leekfits less well

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