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Dessert

Cheese Souffle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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

twelve dishes

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. Crumb the bread and boil it in the milk.

  2. Add the butter, salt, mustard, cheese, and egg yolks; mix thoroughly.

Fold and fill

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Fill twelve dishes three-quarters full.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes and 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cheese + breadtop 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. Cheese + milktop 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

Eggs
Egg whites trap air when beaten, giving the souffle its lift and airy structure; yolks enrich the base.
Cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat, and its proteins help set the base as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in hot milk, they thicken the base and add body to the mixture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the base.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs and forms the liquid that gives the base its body.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold the air that makes a souffle rise. Stirring or deflating them harshly collapses the foam, so the souffle bakes flat and dense.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, bread, milk, egg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, bread, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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