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Dessert

Indian Meal Souffle

A souffle made with milk, cornmeal, butter, and eggs, baked until golden.

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

Indian Meal 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. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Stir in the cornmeal when the milk is hot and cook until smooth and thick.

  3. Remove from heat and add the butter and egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve with vanilla 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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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 peaks, they trap air that lifts the souffle as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and add richness and a tender, custardy texture.
Cornmeal
Cooked into the hot milk, it thickens the base and gives the souffle its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites are beaten until stiff, then folded gently so the air bubbles are not knocked out. Those bubbles are what make the souffle rise in the oven.

“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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