Why it works: Apple and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,551 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
Souffle
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the apples
Boil the apples until soft.
Sweeten the apples.
Beat the apples until smooth.
Place the apples in the center of a round or souffle dish, higher in the middle than at the sides.
Top and brown
Beat the egg whites until frothy.
Sweeten and flavor the egg whites with lemon juice or noyau essence.
Spoon the egg white mixture in small heaps on top of the apples.
Brown the souffle delicately using a salamander or broiler.
Optionally, use stewed cherries or other fruit instead of apples.
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.
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Apple + lemontop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,551 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together16,478 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together53,532 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together44,316 recipes
Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
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Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together122,807 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Apples
- Form the soft, flavorful base that the egg white topping sits on.
- Egg whites
- Whipped into a foam that gives the soufflé its light, airy structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the apples and the egg whites.
The step that matters
Spoon the egg white mixture in small heaps on top of the apples.. Whipped egg white foam holds air only while it is handled gently and not deflated. Heaping it rather than spreading it keeps the surface lofted so it can rise and brown evenly.
Swap the apple
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, lemon):
- Orangefits better
- Vanillafits better
- Limefits better
- Applethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon. 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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