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Dessert

Strawberry or Apple Souffle

A baked dessert of stewed apples or strawberries topped with a custard and beaten egg whites, finished with browned sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Strawberry or Apple Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the apples with a little lemon peel and sweeten them.

  2. Arrange the apples high around the inside of a dish.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by thickening the egg yolks, cinnamon, sugar, and milk over low heat without boiling.

  2. Pour the custard into the center of the apples.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until frothy and cover the dish with them.

  2. Sprinkle pounded sugar over the top and brown it in the 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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Provide the fruit base and body that the custard and egg whites sit on.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard that gives the souffle its rich texture.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam, they lighten the topping and help it rise and set in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and custard and helps the topping brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard without boiling. Heating egg yolks over low heat gently sets them into a smooth custard. If the mixture boils, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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