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Tomato Souffle

A baked tomato soufflé made with eggs, flour, butter, garlic or shallots, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Tomato Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pulp the tomatoes through a sieve.

  3. Rub the garlic around a small saucepan and melt the butter in it, or finely chop the shallots and mix them with the butter.

Make the base

  1. When the butter is hot, stir in the wheat meal, then add the tomato pulp, stirring until thickened and it pulls away from the sides of the pan.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks one at a time, seasoning with pepper and salt.

Bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered souffle pan and bake for 15 minutes.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Wheat + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Tomato + clovetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Wheat + clovetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air for lift, and yolks enrich the base and add structure as it sets.
Wheat meal
Thickens the tomato pulp into a base that holds the whipped egg structure.
Fresh tomatoes
Supply moisture and acidity that give the soufflé its main flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base and carries the garlic or shallot flavour.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiff whites hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the whites will leave a dense, flat result.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, wheat, tomato, butter, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, wheat, tomato, butter, pepper. 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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