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Dessert

Vanilla Souffle

A vanilla-flavored custard dessert made by folding beaten egg whites into a butter, flour, milk, and sugar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Vanilla Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and milk to make a smooth mixture.

  3. Add the sugar and vanilla extract.

  4. Beat in the egg yolks one at a time.

Fold and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the egg whites into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered souffle dish lined with buttered paper.

  4. Steam or bake the souffle for about 30 minutes until set and golden.

Serve

  1. Serve with apricot sauce or your choice of 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + vanillatop 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

Eggs
Egg whites trapped air for lift, and yolks enrich the base and help it set.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth base that holds the soufflé's structure.
Butter
Enriches the base and adds richness and flavour to the soufflé.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth mixture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the soufflé brown lightly as it bakes.

The step that matters

Gently fold the egg whites into the mixture. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites, which is what makes the soufflé rise. Stirring or deflating the whites leaves a dense, flat result.

Swap the vanilla

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk, 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.

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