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Dessert

Strawberry Souffle

A baked dessert of strawberry pulp, sugar, flour, butter, eggs, and milk, folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Strawberry Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pulp

  1. Pass the strawberries through a fine sieve to make a pulp and sweeten to taste with caster sugar.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour, then add the milk and bring to a boil.

  2. Incorporate the sugar and strawberry pulp into the mixture.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time until well combined.

Bake

  1. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gently fold them into the strawberry mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Strawberry + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture when heated.
All-purpose flour
Cooked with butter and milk to form a thickened base that holds the soufflé together.
Strawberry pulp
Provides the main strawberry flavour, sweetness and moisture in the soufflé.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the whites makes the soufflé heavy and flat.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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