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Cheese Souffle

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

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 400°F (200°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. Sift in the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and salt, cooking for five minutes while stirring.

  4. Stir in the melted cheese and beaten egg yolks until well combined.

  5. Allow the mixture to cool slightly.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until set, then 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. 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

Egg whites
Whipped air bubbles expand in the oven, lifting the soufflé and giving it a light texture.
Egg yolks
They enrich the base and help bind it as they set during baking.
Cheese
Adds rich flavour and fat, and helps give the base its body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth base that holds the air bubbles.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the air bubbles in the whipped whites intact. Stirring or overmixing deflates them, so the soufflé rises less and turns 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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