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Cheese Souffle

A light, baked cheese dish made with eggs, milk, flour, butter, and cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Blend butter and flour in a saucepan to make a thick white sauce.

  2. Add milk and stir until boiling.

  3. Cook for 3 minutes.

  4. Stir in the cheese and the beaten egg yolks, seasoning to taste.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a greased dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 25 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately as it will fall.

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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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
Whites trapped with air give the souffle its lift, while yolks enrich the base.
Flour
Flour thickens the butter and milk into a sauce that holds the cheese and air.
Cheese
Cheese adds rich flavour and body to the thickened base.
Milk
Milk forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving it moisture and body.
Butter
Butter adds richness and helps form the smooth roux with the flour.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whites. Stirring or overmixing deflates the foam, so the souffle rises less 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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