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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese soufflé made with butter, flour, eggs, milk, cheese, salt, cayenne pepper, and whipped egg whites.

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 and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the egg yolks and stir in the sweet milk, grated cheese, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Cook the mixture on the stove until thick.

Fold and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the whipped egg whites into the cheese mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 15 to 20 minutes until done.

  5. 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken and enrich the base, while whipped whites trap air so the soufflé rises.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the milk into a stable base.
Butter
Enriches the base and helps form the roux with the flour.
Grated cheese
Adds the main savory flavour and fat that carries the dish's richness.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the roux and forms the liquid body of the cheese base.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Deflating them makes the soufflé 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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