Name: Cheese Souffle
Ingredients: 1 ounce butter; 1 ounce flour; 1 teaspoon mignonette or white pepper; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper; Cayenne pepper to taste; ½ cup milk; 3 eggs; 3 ounces Parmesan cheese

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

Melt the butter in a saucepan.
Add the mignonette pepper and fry for 2-3 minutes to extract flavor.
Strain the butter into a bowl to remove the pepper grains.
Wash the saucepan to remove any remaining pepper.
Return the flavored butter to the saucepan.
Stir in the flour, salt, pepper, and Cayenne pepper until well combined.
Add the milk and stir until the mixture thickens.
Remove from heat and let cool slightly.
Beat in the yolks of two eggs one at a time.
Grate the Parmesan cheese and mix it into the mixture.
Whip the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff.
Gently fold the egg whites into the mixture.
Prepare a pint tin mold as for a Vanilla Souffle Pudding.
Pour the mixture into the prepared mold.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,163 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Pepper + parmesan cheesetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,322 recipes

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

Swap the white pepper

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

Nutmegfits better
Parsleyfits better
Cinnamonfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, milk, egg, parmesan cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.