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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese souffle made with butter, flour, eggs, milk, cheese, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the flour, salt, and red pepper in a bowl.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then add the flour mixture and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk while stirring continuously.

Cook the souffle

  1. Place the mixture over a pan of hot water.

  2. Add the grated cheese and then fold in the beaten eggs.

  3. Cover and cook for 20 minutes without uncovering.

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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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
Beaten eggs trap air and set during cooking, giving the souffle its rise and structure.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux, adding richness and flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so it holds the cheese and eggs.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that the other ingredients are combined into.
Grated cheese
Adds fat and savoury flavour, and melts into the base to enrich its texture.

The step that matters

Cover and cook for 20 minutes without uncovering. Opening the lid lets heat and steam escape and cools the air around the rising mixture. A sudden drop in temperature can cause the souffle to fall and collapse before the eggs have set.

“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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