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Potato Souffle

A baked potato dish filled with a creamy, sweet, lemon-flavored mixture of cream, butter, sugar, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash the potatoes and bake them until done.

  2. Cut the potatoes in half and scoop out the insides into a stewpan.

Make the filling

  1. Add cream, butter, salt, sugar, lemon peel, and egg yolks to the potato insides.

  2. Mix in the frothed egg whites off the heat.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the hollowed potatoes with the mixture and bake in a hot oven.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

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

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the hollow shells and the bulk of the soufflé filling.
Thick cream or condensed milk
Adds richness and moisture to the potato base.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it set when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped to a froth to lighten the mixture and help it rise.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth texture and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Mix in the frothed egg whites off the heat. Folding whites into a hot mixture can deflate the foam and cause them to cook unevenly. Keeping the base off the heat lets the whites stay airy so the filling can rise in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, sugar, lemon, 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.

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