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Dessert

Semolina Souffle

A steamed semolina dessert with lemon rind, sugar, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and lemon work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Semolina Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Simmer the lemon rind and milk together for a few minutes.

  2. Add the sugar and sprinkle in the semolina, cooking until it thickens.

  3. Remove the lemon rind and let the mixture cool slightly.

  4. Beat in the egg yolks and gently fold in the stiffly whisked egg whites.

Steam and serve

  1. Pour into a well-buttered mold and steam gently for about 1 hour.

  2. Serve with jam or custard 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. Semolina + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Semolina
Thickens the milk into a firm base that holds the soufflé's shape.
Egg whites
Whisked to foam, they trap air that lifts the mixture as it steams.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and add richness and a smoother set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina thickens.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the texture tender.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be stiffly whisked and folded in gently so the air they hold is not knocked out. Losing that air leaves a dense result instead of a light, risen soufflé.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against semolina, sugar, 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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