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Dessert

Cheese Souffle

A light, baked cheese souffle made with butter, flour, milk, Parmesan, egg yolks, and 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 skillet.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk, salt, and cayenne pepper, stirring until smooth.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the grated Parmesan cheese.

  5. Beat the egg yolks until light and add to the mixture, then let it cool.

Fold and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

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

  3. Pour into a pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25 minutes.

  4. 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 + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  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
Egg yolks enrich the base, while whipped whites trap air to lift the soufflé.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it thickens the milk into a smooth base that holds the soufflé.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor and body to the base.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a thick, creamy base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the flour roux.

The step that matters

Folding the egg whites into the cheese mixture. Whipped whites hold air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring or overmixing deflates the foam and leaves a dense result.

“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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