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A Fondu, or Cheese Souffle

A cheese souffle made with milk, potato flour, butter, eggs, salt, cayenne, and grated cheese, baked until risen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

A Fondu, or Cheese Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ cup of new milk with 2 ounces of potato flour until smooth.

  2. In a saucepan, heat ¾ cup of milk or cream and stir it into the mixture.

  3. Add 2 ounces of small-cut butter and stir until melted and well combined.

Enrich and bake

  1. Incorporate the well-whisked yolks of 4 large or 5 small eggs, ½ teaspoon of salt, ¼ teaspoon of cayenne, and 3 ounces of grated cheese.

  2. Whisk the egg whites until firm and fold them into the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to firm foam, they trap air and make the soufflé rise and stay light.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the base, helping it set into a tender custard structure.
Potato flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth base that holds the rising foam.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and fat, and helps the soufflé brown on top.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base, softening the texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whisked firm but folded gently; overmixing deflates the air bubbles, and the soufflé will not rise properly in the oven.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits less well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, pepper, 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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