On Food and Cooking

mass of chilly ice cream: the baked Alaska,
which derives from the French omelette
surprise. This thermal contrast is made
possible by the excellent insulating
properties of cellular structures like foams.
For the same reason, a cup of cappuccino
cools more slowly than a cup of regular
coffee.
The basic idea of the soufflé — and of egg-
leavened cakes as well — dates back at least
to the 17th century, when confectioners
noticed that a “biscuit” paste of egg whites
and sugar worked in a mortar would rise in the
oven like a loaf of bread. Sometime around
1700, French cooks began to incorporate
foamed whites into the yolks to make a puffy
omelette soufflée. At mid-century, Vincent La
Chapelle could offer five omelettes soufflées
and — under the names timbale and tourte —
the first recorded soufflés as we now know
them, their foams reinforced with pastry
cream, which came to displace the omelette