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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese souffle made with bread, milk, mustard, pepper, salt, cheese, egg yolks, butter, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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. Crumble the bread into a stewpan and boil it soft in the milk, stirring while cooking.

  2. Add the mustard, red pepper, and salt.

  3. Stir in the grated cheese, egg yolks, and butter over low heat.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into individual baking dishes and bake at 400°F (200°C) until brown on top.

  3. Serve immediately while very hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mustard + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, letting the soufflé rise and giving it a light, airy structure.
Egg yolks
Yolks add richness and help the cheese mixture set into a custard-like body as it cooks.
Grated cheese
Cheese adds savoury flavour and fat, and its proteins help set the structure as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Milk softens the bread into a smooth base and adds moisture to the mixture.
Light bread
Bread soaked in milk thickens the base and gives it body that supports the rise.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold the air that makes a soufflé rise. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so the soufflé bakes flat and dense instead of light.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, pepper, cheese, egg, walnut, butter. 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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