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Dessert

Sweet Souffle

A baked custard-like dessert made with milk, flour, egg yolks, and egg whites, sweetened and glazed with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk and flour to form a thick paste, stirring constantly over medium heat.

  2. Remove from heat and add the egg yolks, salt, and sugar; mix well.

Fold and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until frothy.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

  4. Glaze with white sugar before serving.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 trap air, they lift the soufflé and give it its light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a custard-like texture when baked.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a paste that gives the soufflé body and holds its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens and the eggs set into.
Sugar
Sweetens the soufflé and adds a light browning and glaze on top.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites gently. Stirring or deflating the whipped whites releases the air they hold, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, 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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