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Cheese Soufflees

A baked cheese soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, cheese, eggs, salt, pepper, and cayenne.

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 Soufflees

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir in the milk gradually.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil and let it cool.

Finish the mixture

  1. Add the cheese and seasonings, then mix in the egg yolks.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture gradually.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare a well-buttered souffle tin with a band of greased paper tied around it.

  2. Pour the mixture into the tin and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Remove the paper quickly and wrap a serviette around the tin; 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. Cheese + milktop 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
Whipped whites trap air, lifting the soufflé as it rises and sets in the oven.
Butter
Fat that enriches the base and helps the flour mixture cook smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a sauce base that holds the risen structure.
Milk
Liquid that combines with the flour and butter to form the creamy base.
Dry grated cheese
Adds rich savoury flavour and fat to the base.

The step that matters

Folding the whites into the mixture. Whites must be whipped stiff and folded in gently and gradually. Deflating the foam knocks out the trapped air that makes the soufflé rise, so the result is flat and dense.

“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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