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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese custard made with milk, butter, flour, 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: Milk and butter 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a saucepan, heat the milk until warm.

  3. In another pan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour to make a roux.

  4. Gradually add the warm milk to the roux, stirring until thickened.

Make the mixture

  1. Remove from heat and mix in the cheese, salt, and pepper.

  2. Beat the eggs and fold them into the cheese mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake for 25-30 minutes 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. Milk + buttertop 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. Milk + flourtop 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
Beaten eggs trap air and set during baking, giving the soufflé its puffed structure.
All-purpose flour
Flour cooked in butter forms a roux that thickens the milk into a stable base.
Milk
Milk becomes the thickened sauce base that holds the cheese and eggs together.
Butter
Butter forms the fat for the roux, adding richness and helping the flour thicken smoothly.
Grated cheese
Cheese adds rich flavour and fat, and its proteins help set the custard as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten eggs into the cheese mixture. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the beaten eggs. Stirring vigorously deflates them, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

“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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