A soufflé (French: [su.fle]) is a light baked cake made with egg yolks and beaten egg whites combined with various other ingredients and served as a savoury main dish or sweetened as a dessert. The word soufflé is the past participle of the French verb souffler which means "to blow up" or more loosely "puff up"—an apt description of what happens to this combination of custard and egg whites.
Every soufflé is made from two basic components:
The base provides the flavor and the whites provide the "lift". Foods commonly used for the base in a soufflé include cheese, jam, fruits, berries, chocolate, banana and lemon (the last three are used for desserts, often with a good deal of sugar).
When it comes out of the oven, a soufflé should be puffed up and fluffy, and will generally fall after 5 or 10 minutes (as risen dough does).
Soufflés can be made in containers of all shapes and sizes but it is traditional to make soufflé in ramekins. These containers vary greatly in size, but are typically glazed white, flat-bottomed, round porcelain containers with unglazed bottoms and fluted exterior borders.
There are a number of variations on the soufflé theme. One is an ice cream soufflé, which combines a soufflé with ice cream and either a fruit or a hot sauce.
Another kind of dish entirely is soufflé potatoes, which are puffed-up sauté potato slices, traditionally served with a chateaubriand steak.
Due to soufflés' tendency to collapse quickly upon removal from the oven, the media frequently depicts the dessert in sitcoms, cartoons, children's programs and movies. Often times the gag involves a loud noise or poke causing the soufflé to collapse[1].