Name: Custard Souffle
Ingredients: 1 pint milk; ½ cup sugar; ¼ cup flour; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 eggs

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Custard Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

Combine milk, sugar, and flour in a double boiler.
Cook until it thickens like soft custard.

Finish the batter

Melt butter until smooth.
Let it cool in a pan of cold water.
Add the well-beaten egg yolks to the butter mixture.
Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Fold the beaten whites into the yolk mixture.
Pour the mixture into a buttered pudding dish.

Bake

Place the dish in a pan of boiling water.
Bake for 30 minutes.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Milk: Forms the liquid base that thickens into the custard.
Flour: Thickens the milk mixture as its starch swells with heat.
Eggs: Yolks enrich and set the custard; whipped whites trap air so the soufflé rises.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the custard.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten whites into the yolk mixture. Whipped egg whites hold the air that makes a soufflé rise. Stirring them in roughly or vigorously deflates the foam, so the soufflé bakes flat and dense. Fold gently, cutting through and turning the mixture, until just combined.

“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.