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Omelette Soufflee

A light, airy omelette soufflé flavored with lemon and sweetened with sugar, finished with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 553 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Omelette Soufflee

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the egg whites from the yolks.

  2. Add arrowroot or potato flour, sugar, grated lemon peel, and lemon zest or orange flower water to the yolks. Beat the yolk mixture until smooth.

  3. Whip the egg whites until frothy.

  4. Gently fold the egg whites into the yolk batter.

Cook and bake

  1. Heat a suitable omelet pan.

  2. Add the butter to the pan. Once the butter is boiling, pour the batter into the pan.

  3. Stir gently until it begins to set.

  4. Transfer to a small circular dish and place in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 to 30 minutes until puffed.

Serve

  1. Sprinkle with powdered sugar and serve immediately.

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. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and set the structure as they cook.
Arrowroot or potato flour
Starch thickens the yolk batter and helps it hold its puffed shape.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps stabilise the whipped structure.
Butter
Fat coats the pan to cook the base and adds rich flavour.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the yolk batter. Overmixing knocks air out of the whipped whites, so the soufflé will not rise. Fold gently, just until no streaks of white remain.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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