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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese soufflé made with milk, stale bread crumbs, grated cheese, butter, egg yolks, egg whites, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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. Heat the milk until steaming, then pour it over the stale bread crumbs.

  2. Add the grated cheese, butter, and beaten egg yolks to the mixture.

Fold and bake

  1. Gently cut and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Stir in the salt and transfer the mixture to a buttered baking dish.

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

  4. Serve immediately.

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
Whipped air that lifts the soufflé and gives it a light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help bind it, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat, and helps set the custard as it cooks.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and forms the creamy body of the base.
Stale bread crumbs
Soak up the hot milk and give the base body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Gently cut and fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold the air that makes a soufflé rise. Stirring or deflating them too hard knocks out that air, so the soufflé bakes flat and 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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