Skip to main content
Dessert

Bread Souffle

A sweet bread souffle made with soaked wholemeal bread, milk, sugar, orange or rosewater, eggs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Bread Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the bread in the milk until perfectly soft.

  2. Add sugar and the orange or rosewater.

  3. Beat the mixture with the egg yolks.

Make the souffle

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth and gently mix with the rest.

  2. Pour the mixture into a well-buttered pie dish.

  3. Bake the souffle for 30 minutes in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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
Egg whites whipped to a stiff froth give the souffle its light, risen structure, and yolks enrich it.
Allinson wholemeal bread
Soaked in milk until soft, it thickens the mixture into a body that holds the whipped eggs.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture so the mixture stays tender when baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the bread and orange or rosewater.

The step that matters

Gently folding in the whipped egg whites. Stirring vigorously knocks air out of the stiff froth, so the souffle bakes flat and dense instead of rising lightly.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipesOrange GelatinOrange Gelatin100 recipes