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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, eggs, cheese, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk, salt, and cayenne or paprika; cook for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten egg yolks and grated cheese; let cool.

Fold and bake

  1. Once cool, gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a buttered baking dish or individual dishes.

  3. Place in a pan of hot water and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35 minutes, or 15-20 minutes for individual dishes.

Serve

  1. 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. 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

Butter and flour
Cooked together they form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth, stable base.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air that lifts the souffle as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help set the custard structure as it cooks.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavour and fat, and helps the base hold its body after baking.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the souffle heavy and reduces its 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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