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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 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. Sift in the flour and mix well.

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

  4. Stir in the melted cheese and egg yolks, mixing continuously.

Bake and serve

  1. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C).

  3. Serve immediately after baking.

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
Trapped air in the whipped whites expands in the oven, lifting the soufflé and giving it a light texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and, when heated, help thicken the base and set its structure.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth base that holds the air bubbles.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat, giving the soufflé its cheesy taste and richness.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the base, which the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the soufflé heavy and prevents it from rising well 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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