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Cheese Souffle

A light, baked cheese soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, salt, cayenne pepper, eggs, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cheese Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk, salt, and cayenne pepper, and bring to a boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten yolks of the eggs and grated cheese.

  5. Allow the mixture to cool.

Bake and serve

  1. When ready to bake, fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) until puffed and golden.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whipped whites trap air and lift the soufflé as it bakes, while yolks enrich the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a smooth sauce that holds the soufflé's structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth white sauce.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat, and helps set the base once it is baked.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the roux that starts the sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Whites hold air only when whipped, and deflating them by stirring vigorously loses the lift the soufflé needs to rise in the oven.

“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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