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Cheese Souffle

A baked cheese soufflé made with milk, bread crumbs, butter, cheese, eggs, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. Heat the milk in a saucepan over boiling water and stir in the bread crumbs until smooth.

  2. Remove from heat and add the butter, grated cheese, salt, cayenne, and beaten egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and place it in a pan of hot water.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  4. 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. 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. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  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 into foam that traps air, lifting the souffle as it bakes and sets.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a custard-like structure when heated.
Bread crumbs
Thicken the milk and give the base body so it holds the rising foam.
Grated cheese
Adds rich savory flavor and fat, and helps the base stay tender.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the crumbs thicken and the eggs set within.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Stirring or overmixing deflates the foam, so the souffle rises poorly and turns 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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