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Dessert

Cheese Souffles

A baked cheese soufflé made with butter, flour, milk, salt, cayenne pepper, egg yolks, grated cheese, and egg whites.

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 Souffles

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. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the milk, salt, and cayenne pepper, and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks and grated cheese, then set aside to cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Once cool, fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 25-30 minutes.

  3. 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

Egg whites
Whipped to trap air, which expands in the oven and makes the soufflé rise.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a custard-like structure as it bakes.
Grated cheese
Adds rich flavour and fat, and its proteins help set the structure as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce that supports the rise.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and body.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the soufflé rise less and turn 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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