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Dessert

Chocolate Souffle

A steamed chocolate dessert made with chocolate, flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, vanilla, and served with custard or sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine milk and chocolate in a small saucepan and simmer gently until dissolved.

  2. Melt butter in a separate pan and stir in flour.

  3. Add the chocolate mixture and boil well.

  4. Let mixture cool slightly.

  5. Add vanilla and sugar.

  6. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.

Finish and steam

  1. Gently fold in the stiffly whisked egg whites.

  2. Pour mixture into a well-buttered mold.

  3. Steam gently for 45 to 50 minutes.

  4. Serve with custard or sweet 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Whisked to stiffness, they trap air and lift the soufflé as it steams.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and add richness and set once heated.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and milk base so it holds the airy structure.
Chocolate
Provides the main flavour and some body to the milk base.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the chocolate dissolves into and the flour thickens.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be stiffly whisked and folded in gently so the trapped air is not knocked out. Losing that air leaves the soufflé dense instead of light.

“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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