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Dessert

Custard Souffle

A light custard-based dessert with folded egg whites, baked until risen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the custard base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a saucepan, bring the milk to a boil.

  3. In a bowl, beat the butter and flour together.

  4. Gradually add the boiling milk to the butter and flour mixture, stirring constantly.

  5. Cook for eight minutes, stirring often.

  6. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks and sugar together, then add to the cooked mixture and let it cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Once cool, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake for twenty minutes.

  3. Serve immediately with a creamy 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 souffle its lift, and yolks enrich the custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture with butter into a stable base that holds the souffle together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the flour thickens.
Butter
Enriches the base and adds richness and flavour to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavour of the custard base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be beaten to stiff peaks and folded gently into a cooled base. Over-mixing deflates the air bubbles, and a hot base can melt the foam, so the souffle will not rise well.

“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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