Skip to main content
Dessert

A Souffle of Ginger

A sweet, airy souffle flavored with ginger, lemon, cinnamon, and brandy, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Souffle of Ginger

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Bring the milk and cream to a boil with the lemon peel, cinnamon, and sugar.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes.

  3. Let the mixture cool.

  4. Melt the butter over low heat, stirring until it thickens and leaves the bottom of the pan.

  5. Mix in the preserved ginger, brandy, and nutmeg until well combined.

Prepare the mold

  1. Grease a savoy cake mold thickly with butter using a pastry brush.

  2. Decorate the mold with dried cherries.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the souffle mixture into the mold and place it in a saucepan with boiling water halfway up the sides.

  2. Cover the saucepan and place hot charcoal on the lid.

  3. Cook on low heat for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the mold 10 minutes before serving to help the souffle firm up.

  5. Run a knife around the edges to loosen it.

  6. Serve with white wine sauce.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base that is reduced and flavoured into the custard.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and thickens the mixture as it is melted and stirred.
Preserved ginger
Provides the main flavour and aroma of the dish.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavour to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the mixture gently in a water bath. Cooking over low heat in a water bath, with the mold surrounded by boiling water and covered, keeps the heat gentle and even. Gentle heat helps the mixture set evenly without curdling or drying out at the edges.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, cinnamon, sugar, butter, ginger, brandy):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, cinnamon, sugar, butter, ginger, brandy. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesGinger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes