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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese soufflé made with bread crumbs, milk, cheese, eggs, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cheese Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Combine the bread crumbs and milk in a saucepan and cook over medium heat, stirring until smooth.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the egg yolks, cheese, and butter.

Fold and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish placed in a pan of boiling water.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the soufflé its light, risen structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a tender, custard-like texture when baked.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk into a smooth base that holds the folded egg whites.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat to the base, and helps it brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Folding the beaten egg whites. Stirring instead of folding knocks out the air trapped in the whites, so the soufflé will rise less and turn 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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