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
Prepare the base
Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.
Make a white sauce and add the grated cheese; let it cool.
Fold and bake
Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.
Bake immediately in paper cases or a buttered baking dish.
Bake for 10 to 15 minutes.
Serve
Serve immediately after removing from the oven.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,962 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,426 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Whites trapped in beaten foam provide the airy lift that makes the soufflé rise.
- Grated cheese
- Adds rich flavor and fat, and its proteins help set the structure as it bakes.
- Purity flour
- Thickens the white sauce so it can hold the cheese and the folded egg foam.
- Butter
- Enriches the white sauce and adds flavor and a richer texture.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the white sauce that carries the cheese.
The step that matters
Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Stirring or deflating them loses the foam that lifts the soufflé 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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