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Dessert

Semolina Souffle

Semolina soufflé made with milk, semolina, sugar, butter, eggs, lemon rind, steamed or baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Semolina Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Mix semolina with a little milk in a bowl.

  2. Boil the remaining milk with grated lemon rind in a pan.

  3. Pour the boiling milk onto the semolina mixture.

  4. Return the mixture to the pan.

  5. Stir the mixture until it boils.

  6. Add sugar and butter, cooking for about 5 minutes.

  7. Allow the mixture to cool.

Make the soufflé

  1. Separate the egg yolks and add them to the mixture.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until stiff.

  3. Gently fold the stiff egg whites into the mixture.

  4. Grease a soufflé dish and pour in the mixture.

  5. Cover with greased paper and steam for 1 hour or bake in a buttered dish for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with marmalade sauce.

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

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

  2. Semolina + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + semolinatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 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
Yolks enrich and set the custard, while stiff whites lighten the soufflé with trapped air.
Semolina
Starch thickens the milk into a stiff base that holds the soufflé's shape.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina swells in and cooks into a custard.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the base.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the base and helps give the soufflé its flavour and tender texture.

The step that matters

Folding the stiff egg whites into the mixture. Stirring instead of folding knocks out the air whisked into the whites, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense. The base should be cool enough that it does not melt or deflate the whites.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, semolina, butter, 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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