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Dessert

Omelet Souffle

A light, sweet omelet soufflé made with egg whites, yolks, powdered sugar, and lemon juice, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Omelet Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Grease a small baking dish.

  2. Beat the egg whites until very stiff.

  3. Beat the egg yolks until creamy.

  4. Fold the yolks into the egg whites.

  5. Add the powdered sugar and lemon juice, and stir quickly.

  6. Pour the mixture into the baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle with additional powdered sugar.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they give the omelet its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Beaten until creamy, they add richness and flavor to the airy base.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the omelet brown lightly in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the eggs and sugar.

The step that matters

Fold the yolks into the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only when stiff and unbroken. Folding gently keeps the foam intact, so the omelet rises and stays light instead of deflating.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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