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Cheese Souffle

A quick cheese soufflé made with American cheese, eggs, and seasonings, served immediately on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cheese Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese base

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler.

  2. Add the cheese and seasonings to the melted butter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in hot water.

  4. Gradually pour the dissolved baking soda over the melting cheese.

  5. Beat the eggs separately.

  6. Add a little cold water to the yolks while beating.

  7. Stir the yolks into the cheese mixture until smooth.

  8. Add the lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in the whipped egg whites.

  2. Serve immediately on toast.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

American cheese
Melts into a smooth, creamy base that gives the souffle its flavour.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the base, while whipped whites trap air so the souffle can rise.
Baking soda
Raises the pH of the cheese, helping it melt smoothly and stay creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the cheese melt into a smooth mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the rich cheese flavour.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air trapped in the whites. That trapped air is what lifts the souffle, so stirring or deflating the mixture will leave it flat and dense.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, egg, mustard, butter, sauce, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, mustard, butter, sauce, pepper. 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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