Every February 28 is celebrated World Chocolate Soufflé Day, a wonderful preparation based on yolks and whipped egg whites, light, airy and with a sensational liquid interior.
It is a dessert often found in restaurants and can only be truly appreciated when served fresh from the oven. But, although it may seem complicated, all it requires is paying attention to the preparation steps so that it is ethereal, with a flat and smooth surface and an interior that falls apart as soon as you open it with a spoon.
The origins of the souffle – puffed in French – are still disputed between the French chefs Vincent La Chapelle, Antoine Beauvilliers and Marie-Antoine Carême, from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. So there is no specific date as to when the recipe was invented.
However, everything indicates that the author of this recipe was, in the mid-18th century, Vincent La Chapelle, who was a cook in the service of William of Orange, king of England, Scotland and Ireland.
The first mention of this preparation appears with a soufflé omelet, in La Chapelle’s work, Le Cuisinier Moderne (Modern Cook, in Spanish), a recipe book published in 1753 that he dedicated to this monarch, as detailed in a study by the School Superior Polytechnic of Chimborazo (Ecuador). According to this same institution, some 30 years later, in 1786, Beauvilliers took the legacy of the souffle and served it in different versions in his restaurant in Paris, one of the first luxury establishments in the world.
Later, it was the French chef, Carême, who introduced and developed the soufflé, thanks to the modernization of cooking technologies. Carême worked at the service of figures such as the Prince of Württemberg or Tsar Alexander I of Russia, as explained in an article by Marion Godfroy-Tayart de Borms, on the evolution of the figure of the chef throughout his career. chef. At the beginning of the 19th century, the oven heating system was improved, which allowed temperatures to be controlled much better, something key for this dessert.
Although all chocolate soufflé recipes have as common ingredients egg whites, sugar, butter, melted chocolate and yolks that are incorporated separately, there are several versions of the preparation.
In some recipe books, a pastry cream or bomb paste is made first, to ensure that the soufflé is left with more air and inflates. But it is not necessary to make this cream to achieve the ideal result. At the Amar restaurant, and as recommended by gastronomic guides such as Gault Millau, they make the soufflé only with egg yolks, chocolate melted with butter and egg whites whipped with sugar.
And what can this dessert be accompanied with? With a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which provides a cold contrast to the hot preparation or, with churros, to dip inside the waste, just as they do at Amar.
