Skip to main content
Dessert

Pondu Op Parmesan Cheese

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pondu Op Parmesan Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Mix flour, butter, salt, and white pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Add milk and stir over heat until it boils.

  3. Continue stirring until the mixture is smooth.

  4. Remove from heat and add Parmesan cheese and egg yolks.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Pour the mixture into a soufflé dish.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until ready.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

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

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

Egg whites
Whipped to firm foam, they trap air that lifts the soufflé as it bakes.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help set the structure as the soufflé cooks.
Flour
Combined with butter and milk, it thickens the base into a stable sauce.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and fat, enriching the base.
Butter
Fat that forms the roux with flour and adds richness to the base.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air only while their foam is intact. Vigorous stirring deflates the foam, so the soufflé bakes flat and dense instead of rising.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, parmesan cheese, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, parmesan cheese, egg. 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.

You might also like

Cheese BallsCheese Balls97 recipesCheese CakeCheese Cake55 recipesCream CheeseCream Cheese46 recipesLemon PieLemon Pie37 recipes