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Cheese Souffle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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. Rub in the flour and let bubble until cooked, but do not let it brown.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and add to the milk.

  4. Slowly pour this mixture over the thickening, adding cheese and seasoning.

  5. Stir until the cheese is melted and the mixture is smooth and thickened, but do not let it boil.

  6. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites and pour into a buttered baking dish.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes in a water bath in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Avoid opening the oven door, as soufflés fall easily.

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. Cheese + milktop 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the base and stiffly beaten whites lift the soufflé as it bakes.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form the roux that thickens the base.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the milk into a stable base.
Milk
Liquid that is thickened into the sauce base that carries the cheese and eggs.
Cheese
Adds rich flavour and body to the base once melted into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until the cheese is melted and the mixture is smooth and thickened, but do not let it boil.. Boiling can curdle the egg yolks and scramble the base, so it loses smoothness. Gentle heat keeps the custard silky and lets it thicken evenly before the whites are folded in.

“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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