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Cheese Souffle

A light, baked cheese dish made with milk, eggs, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the base

  1. Grate the cheese until you have 2 tablespoons.

  2. Mix the cheese with ½ cup of milk.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and add the yolks to the mixture.

  4. Add pepper and salt, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered round cake tin.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately as it will deflate quickly.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites trapped with air create the light, risen structure, and yolks add richness and set structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid that forms the base sauce and moistens the mixture.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat, and its proteins help set the baked structure.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air bubbles in the whites. Overmixing deflates them, and the soufflé will rise less and collapse sooner.

“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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