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Dessert

Macaroon Souffle

A sweet soufflé made with macaroons, milk, eggs, sugar, and topped with candied fruit or nuts and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Macaroon Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the macaroons in 1 cup of milk.

  2. Pour the milk over the beaten egg yolks and cook in a double boiler until slightly thickened, stirring constantly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites and ½ cup of sugar.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered mold.

  3. Set the mold in a pan of water.

  4. Bake for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a plate, topping with chopped candied fruit or nuts and whipped 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Milk + nutstop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together982 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Macaroons
Provide the main flavour and body, softening into the custard as they are scalded in milk.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture into a rich custard when gently cooked.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in, they lighten the mixture and help it rise in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the soufflé and helps stabilise the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over a double boiler. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if heated too quickly. Gentle, constant stirring over a double boiler thickens them smoothly before the whites are folded in.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, cream. 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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