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Cheese Souffle

A creamy cheese soufflé made with melted cheese, eggs, baking soda, and seasonings, served hot on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cheese Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cheese base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over the hot water.

  2. Add the cheese and seasonings, stirring until melted.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water and gradually pour it into the cheese mixture.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until light, adding a little cold water, then stir into the cheese mixture.

  5. Once smooth and creamy, mix in the Worcestershire sauce and lemon juice.

Finish and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture.

  2. Serve immediately on toast.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Melts into the base to give the soufflé its rich flavour and body.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the base, while whipped whites lift and set the soufflé.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form a smooth, creamy base with the cheese.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cheese and lemon juice to help the mixture rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring vigorously would deflate the mixture.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, egg, mustard, butter, sauce, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, egg, mustard, butter, sauce, pepper. 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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