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Dessert

Lemon Souffle

A light, baked lemon custard made with almond milk, bread crumbs, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,655 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Lemon Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Pour almond milk over bread crumbs and melted fat; mix until creamy.

  2. Grate lemon rind and add to the mixture along with powdered sugar and lemon juice.

  3. Stir in beaten egg yolks.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat egg whites until stiff and fold into the mixture.

  2. Pour into a greased mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) until set.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

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

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

  5. Almond + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and make the soufflé rise and turn light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard-like base as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the almond milk and form the body that holds the soufflé together.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the base and dissolves smoothly into the mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites into the mixture. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the soufflé heavy and less able to rise in the oven.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

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

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