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Dessert

Cheese Souffle

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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. Add the milk and salt.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Stir in the cheese and well-beaten egg yolks.

  6. Let cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased dish.

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

  4. Serve immediately, as it will fall if allowed to stand after baking.

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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
Yolks enrich and thicken the base, while whipped whites trap air so the souffle rises.
Flour
Cooked with butter and milk, it forms a thickened base that gives the souffle structure.
Cheese
Adds rich flavor and fat, and helps the base set as it bakes.
Butter
Its fat is melted with the flour to start the roux that thickens the base.
Milk
Mixed with the roux, it forms the liquid base that the cheese and eggs join.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that makes the souffle rise. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring deflates the foam and the souffle rises less.

“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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