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Dessert

Apple Souffle

A baked dessert of stewed apples topped with custard and beaten egg whites, finished with browned sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,598 recipes. Both carry methyl cinnamate, which smells strawberry. The science ↓

Apple Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the apples

  1. Stew the apples with a little lemon peel and sweeten them.

  2. Arrange the stewed apples high around the inside of a dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, cinnamon, sugar, and milk; heat gently until thickened but do not boil.

  2. Pour the custard into the center of the apples.

Top and brown

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff and cover the apples with them.

  2. Sprinkle pounded sugar over the top and brown it in the oven.

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. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  2. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Apple + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Apples
Provide the fruit base and tart flavor that the soufflé surrounds.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a rich custard that holds the center together.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the topping its light, airy structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and softness.
Sugar
Sweetens the apples and custard and helps the topping brown.

The step that matters

Heat the custard gently without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but if the custard boils they can curdle and turn grainy, leaving the filling lumpy instead of smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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