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Dessert

Souffle D'homard

A lobster soufflé made with butter, flour, water, eggs, lemon juice, and seasonings, folded with whipped egg whites and steamed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Souffle D'homard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Make a panada by melting the butter, then whisking in the flour and water until smooth.

  2. Pound the lobster meat and mix it with the panada, then rub through a sieve.

  3. Add seasoning, lemon juice, and the yolks of the eggs to the mixture.

Assemble and cook

  1. Whip the egg whites to stiff peaks and gently fold them into the lobster mixture.

  2. Use a piping bag with a large plain tube to line a soufflé dish with the mixture.

  3. Fill the center with oyster soufflé (see page 44) and steam for one hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with oyster 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks give the soufflé its light, risen structure, and yolks enrich it.
Flour
Flour in the panada thickens the mixture and gives it body to hold the lobster.
Butter
Butter melted with the flour forms the roux-like panada, adding richness and smooth texture.
Lobster
Pounded lobster meat supplies the main flavour and the body of the soufflé mixture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or deflating the whites leaves a dense, flat result.

“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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