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Cheese Souffle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Add the hot milk and mix well.

  4. Remove from heat and let cool.

Build the batter

  1. Once cool, stir in the cheese and egg yolks.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 to 25 minutes.

  2. Serve in the same dish.

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. Milk + cheesetop 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. Milk + flourtop 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
Egg whites trap air when beaten, lifting the soufflé as it bakes; yolks enrich the base.
Flour
Flour cooked with butter forms a roux that thickens the milk into a stable base.
Milk
Milk forms the liquid base that the roux thickens into a smooth sauce.
Cheese
Cheese adds rich flavour and fat, and contributes to the body of the base.
Butter
Butter adds fat and flavour and forms the roux with the flour.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the mixture. Egg whites must be beaten to stiff peaks to hold air. Folding gently, rather than stirring, keeps that air from collapsing, which is what lets the soufflé rise in the oven.

“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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