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Cheese Souffle

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

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 saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the milk, salt, and cayenne or paprika; cook for 2-3 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the beaten egg yolks and grated cheese; let cool.

Fold and bake

  1. Once cool, gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a buttered baking dish or individual dishes.

  3. Set the dish in a pan of hot water and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35 minutes, or 15-20 minutes for individual dishes.

Serve

  1. 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 + 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
Yolks enrich the base and whites, whipped to a stiff froth, lift the souffle as they set.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it thickens the milk into a sauce that holds the souffle's structure.
Butter
Forms the roux with flour, adding richness and helping the base stay smooth.
Milk
Liquid that the flour thickens into a smooth white sauce base.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat to the base, and helps the souffle brown lightly.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only while whipped; overmixing or folding them into a warm base deflates them, so the souffle loses lift. Fold gently and only once the base has cooled.

“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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