Skip to main content
Dessert

Snow Souffle

A light, airy dessert made with cream, sugar, vanilla, eggs, and butter, baked until puffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Snow 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.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Pour in the milk, sugar, and vanilla; bring to a boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Beat the mixture until smooth, then add the egg yolks.

Whip and fold

  1. In a separate bowl, add a pinch of salt to the egg whites and whip until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered souffle mold or pie dish and secure a band of buttered paper around the edge.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the paper, dust with sugar, and 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and lift the souffle as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard base once heated.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so it can hold the whipped egg whites.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base, adding moisture and softness to the souffle.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the roux that starts the base.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air bubbles in the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the souffle rise less and turn dense.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, butter, flour, 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

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes