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Dessert

Souffle of Eggs

A baked egg souffle flavored with brandy, milk, lemon peel, and cinnamon, served with a butter-sugar-white wine sauce and preserved apricots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Souffle of Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan over low heat, melt the butter and mix in the flour for 5 minutes.

  2. Whisk in the eggs one at a time until fully incorporated.

  3. Add the brandy and the boiled, strained milk with lemon peel and cinnamon, whisking until smooth.

Prepare the mold

  1. Butter the inside of a plain tin mold and arrange dried cherries around the sides.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into the mold and place it in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Cook until the mixture is set.

  3. Gently turn the souffle out of the mold and serve with a sauce made from butter, sugar, and white wine, garnished with preserved apricots.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Set the mixture into a light, custard-like structure as they cook.
Flour
Thickens the butter base so it can hold the whisked eggs and milk.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that the eggs set within.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the base, softening the texture.

The step that matters

Cook until the mixture is set. Egg proteins coagulate with heat, so undercooking leaves the soufflé runny and overcooking makes it rubbery and dry. Cooking gently in boiling water helps the custard set evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, brandy, milk, cinnamon, sauce. 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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