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Cheese Souffle

A baked dish of milk, flour, butter, eggs, and cheese, finished with a beaten egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Thicken 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of flour in a saucepan over hot water.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and remove from heat.

  3. Stir in 2 well beaten eggs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and top with the beaten egg white.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) until firm, but do not let it boil.

  3. When served, sprinkle with grated cheese and garnish with parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk so the base can hold the air added later.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the base.
Eggs
Set as the soufflé bakes, giving it structure and body.
Egg white
Beaten whites trap air that lifts the soufflé as it bakes.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor when sprinkled over the finished soufflé.

The step that matters

Bake without boiling. Egg mixtures set gently with steady heat. Boiling can curdle the eggs and cause the soufflé to collapse and turn grainy.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

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