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Dessert

Chestnut Souffle

A baked chestnut soufflé made with chestnuts, sugar, butter, eggs, milk, breadcrumbs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chestnut 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 the chestnuts

  1. Boil chestnuts in salted water until tender; drain and remove the brown inner skin.

  2. Put chestnuts back in boiling salted water for 2 minutes, then press through a sieve and keep warm.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together sugar and butter in a bowl.

  2. Add mashed chestnuts, egg yolks, milk, and fine bread crumbs to the mixture.

  3. Add lemon juice and zest for flavor.

  4. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold and cover tightly.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. Serve with plain cream.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Chestnut + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Chestnut + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together191 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Provide the main body and starchy, mildly sweet flavor of the soufflé.
Egg whites
Whipped to form foam that lifts and sets the soufflé as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help set the custard-like base of the soufflé.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the chestnut base for folding.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the mixture body and structure.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that makes a soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the foam and the soufflé will rise poorly.

Swap the chestnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, milk, bread, lemon. 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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