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Dessert

Simple Souffle

A light, jam‑filled soufflé made with milk, eggs, wheatmeal, sugar, and vanilla or lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Simple Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Smooth the wheatmeal in part of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk with sugar and lemon rind or vanilla until boiling.

  3. Stir the smoothed wheatmeal into the boiling milk and cook gently for 5 to 8 minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

  5. Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix them well with the cooled mixture (remove the lemon rind or vanilla).

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Spread a layer of jam in a pie dish, pour the mixture over the jam, and bake until risen and brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the base and whites, whipped and folded in, lift the soufflé as it rises.
Allinson fine wheatmeal
Its starch thickens the milk into a stable base that holds the risen structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the custard base, giving a soft, moist texture after baking.
Jam
Sits under the mixture as a sweet, fruity layer that flavours the baked soufflé.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture. Under-whipped whites will not hold air and the soufflé will not rise well. Over-mixing when folding knocks out the air, so fold gently and bake promptly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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