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Cheese Souffle

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

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

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. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring carefully, then add the salt.

  4. Cook for 2 minutes and let cool.

Add the eggs and cheese

  1. Beat the egg yolks and mix them with the cheese.

  2. Once the mixture is almost cold, fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered baking dish and place it in a pan of hot water.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. For individual servings, bake in ramekins for 10 to 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Serve immediately, as souffles fall 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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

Eggs
Whites beaten and folded in trap air, giving the souffle its rise and light structure.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce that holds the mixture together.
Butter
Provides fat for the base, adding richness and a rounded flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid that turns the flour and butter into a thick, pourable base.
Cheese
Adds savory flavor and body to the egg yolk mixture.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold the air that makes the souffle rise. Stirring hard or folding while the base is hot deflates the foam, so the souffle rises poorly and falls quickly.

“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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