Souffle: Sweet and Savoury

My one continuous criticism with this collection of recipes is that the author has often written the recipes to be divided up into small, multiple souffle dishes/ramekins, and gives no alternative measures for the recipe if you want to make them in a standard 1.5 quart souffle dish.If she had given them for 1.5 quart souffle dishes it's easy to divide them up into whatever size souffle dishes/ramekins you have and shorten the times slightly, but it's not as easy to do the opposite.She also uses a wide variety of sizes of souffle dishes (diameters and heights) in the recipes, which someone starting out may not have. Had she done them for a standard 1.5 quart dish it would be easy to break them up into multiples.As anyone who has made souffles knows, there are good recipes (both sweet and savory) out there that work every time and those that don't work no matter what you do, but few books explain WHY or WHAT TO WATCH FOR like the first chapters of  The Art of Making Souffles  and  The Souffle Cookbook . These first chapters alone are worth the price of buying these books. I have, for instance, buttered and sugared the interiors of souffle dishes many a time without ever understanding WHY I was doing it (to give the souffle something to grab onto and help keep it from falling). These books changed that. Most of the recipes for savory souffles, however, are fairly dated 1950s fare in the Myra Waldo book (the book was first written in 1954 and revised thereafter), but a few hold up today (cheese, spinach, Florentine, etc.), and some of the dessert souffles look interesting, and the sauces at the end are things that in some cases I have not seen before (out of fashion now, perhaps) but seem promising to revive or modify and give new life.While this book is not as comprehensive as the two referenced above when it comes to general information and the whys and wherefores of souffle making, it does have an opening section with a few pages of tips for success, as well as some nice pictures, and much more attractive, timely, inventive recipes overall, and some of them would wow your guests. For this reason alone it's worth buying if you want to explore the world of souffles, but I'd pick up used copies of the other two mentioned if you want to understand souffles thoroughly.All souffles are a combination of souffle base, flavoring elements (cheese and spinach, for instance, or strawberry puree), and eggs that have been combined with air. That's it. Once you understand that you can make your own souffles up, keeping in mind that if you want a seafood souffle you're going to be using seafood but cutting it up into tiny pieces so as not to weigh the souffle down from rising.The first souffle I ever made was using an M.F.K. Fisher recipe for cheese souffle in the book she did for Time-Life with Julia Child called  Cooking of Provincial France . It works every time, and in time I learned to doctor it up and make it my own, adding chopped chives and finely diced pieces of ham and so on (which make it even prettier). Learn a reliable recipe for sweet and one for savory (try a few recipes on the Net, such as Mark Bittman's chocolate souffle) and then use books like this for flavoring inspiration you can make up on your own (or adapt).I guarantee you, when making souffles, some recipes work and some just don't, and what you want to find is not success with a given recipe, but one that works reliably for savory recipes and one that works reliably for sweets, and then you can just change the flavoring and do anything you want and get creative. Passionfruit puree added? No problem.There's also a reliable souffle recipe with variations in Volume I of the Julia Child classic  Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 50th Anniversary Edition . Again, learn one and then make variations.The worst souffle recipes I've come across are in  Rise to the Occasion: A French Food Experience . In this book by the restaurant known for souffles the recipes just don't work. The pictures are beautiful, but the recipes are a disaster, and few of the steps common to success with souffles are even mentioned, let alone explained.Finally, before you buy another book on souffles (or while waiting for this one to arrive), search the Net for Gordon Ramsay Passion Fruit and Banana Souffle. The written recipe and the video version will both walk you through the recipe AND explain why you're doing the steps you're doing. Follow along and break the souffle into its component parts (the base, the flavoring, and the egg whites), write down the steps, and take good notes, then when you want to adapt that recipe and make something new and unique, you can, plus the information gleaned will benefit you with every other souffle you make.

Great book. Full of recipes that anyone should be able to make. The souffle is supposed to be hard to make, but this book makes it easy.

a variety of ingrediants

Great

Great transaction. Great product.

This book is the UK paperback version of this same book with a different cover in hardback:  Souffles My review of that version is as follows:My one continuous criticism with this collection of recipes is that the author has often written the recipes to be divided up into small, multiple souffle dishes/ramekins, and gives no alternative measures for the recipe if you want to make them in a standard 1.5 quart souffle dish.If she had given them for 1.5 quart souffle dishes it's easy to divide them up into whatever size souffle dishes/ramekins you have and shorten the times slightly, but it's not as easy to do the opposite.She also uses a wide variety of sizes of souffle dishes (diameters and heights) in the recipes, which someone starting out may not have. Had she done them for a standard 1.5 quart dish it would be easy to break them up into multiples.As anyone who has made souffles knows, there are good recipes (both sweet and savory) out there that work every time and those that don't work no matter what you do, but few books explain WHY or WHAT TO WATCH FOR like the first chapters of  The Art of Making Souffles  and  The Souffle Cookbook . These first chapters alone are worth the price of buying these books. I have, for instance, buttered and sugared the interiors of souffle dishes many a time without ever understanding WHY I was doing it (to give the souffle something to grab onto and help keep it from falling). These books changed that. Most of the recipes for savory souffles, however, are fairly dated 1950s fare in the Myra Waldo book (the book was first written in 1954 and revised thereafter), but a few hold up today (cheese, spinach, Florentine, etc.), and some of the dessert souffles look interesting, and the sauces at the end are things that in some cases I have not seen before (out of fashion now, perhaps) but seem promising to revive or modify and give new life.While this book is not as comprehensive as the two referenced above when it comes to general information and the whys and wherefores of souffle making, it does have an opening section with a few pages of tips for success, as well as some nice pictures, and much more attractive, timely, inventive recipes overall, and some of them would wow your guests. For this reason alone it's worth buying if you want to explore the world of souffles, but I'd pick up used copies of the other two mentioned if you want to understand souffles thoroughly.All souffles are a combination of souffle base, flavoring elements (cheese and spinach, for instance, or strawberry puree), and eggs that have been combined with air. That's it. Once you understand that you can make your own souffles up, keeping in mind that if you want a seafood souffle you're going to be using seafood but cutting it up into tiny pieces so as not to weigh the souffle down from rising.The first souffle I ever made was using an M.F.K. Fisher recipe for cheese souffle in the book she did for Time-Life with Julia Child called  Cooking of Provincial France . It works every time, and in time I learned to doctor it up and make it my own, adding chopped chives and finely diced pieces of ham and so on (which make it even prettier). Learn a reliable recipe for sweet and one for savory (try a few recipes on the Net, such as Mark Bittman's chocolate souffle) and then use books like this for flavoring inspiration you can make up on your own (or adapt).I guarantee you, when making souffles, some recipes work and some just don't, and what you want to find is not success with a given recipe, but one that works reliably for savory recipes and one that works reliably for sweets, and then you can just change the flavoring and do anything you want and get creative. Passionfruit puree added? No problem.There's also a reliable souffle recipe with variations in Volume I of the Julia Child classic  Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 50th Anniversary Edition . Again, learn one and then make variations.The worst souffle recipes I've come across are in  Rise to the Occasion: A French Food Experience . In this book by the restaurant known for souffles the recipes just don't work. The pictures are beautiful, but the recipes are a disaster, and few of the steps common to success with souffles are even mentioned, let alone explained.Finally, before you buy another book on souffles (or while waiting for this one to arrive), search the Net for Gordon Ramsay Passion Fruit and Banana Souffle. The written recipe and the video version will both walk you through the recipe AND explain why you're doing the steps you're doing. Follow along and break the souffle into its component parts (the base, the flavoring, and the egg whites), write down the steps, and take good notes, then when you want to adapt that recipe and make something new and unique, you can, plus the information gleaned will benefit you with every other souffle you make.