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Cheese Souffle (Tablespoons of butter)
2 tablespoons of butter 3 tablespoons flour 1/2 cup milk--scalded A speck of cayenne 1/4 cup grated cheese 3 whites of eggs 1/2 teaspoon salt Melt the butter; add the flour, and when well mixed, add gradually the scalded milk. Then add salt, cayenne and cheese. Remove from the fire. Cool the mixture, and fold into it the whites of the eggs, beaten until stiff. Pour into a buttered baking dish, and cook twenty minutes in a slow oven. Serve at once. Souffles must go directly to the table as they fall quickly when removed from the heat.
A small, plain soufflé built on a very thick béchamel and lifted entirely by egg whites — there are no yolks in it at all. It comes together in about ten minutes of stovework, so have the dish buttered and the oven up before you start.
- Slow ovenRead this as 300-325F. A soufflé bound only with whites sets gently; higher heat browns the crust before the centre is cooked and makes the collapse faster.
- Twenty minutes is a minimumTwenty minutes may not be enough -- in a deep dish at the low end of a slow oven it can want longer. It is done when the top is set and dry to a light touch and the whole thing moves as one piece rather than sloshing.
- The hinge: cool the baseThe sauce must be barely warm — cool enough to touch comfortably — before the whites go in. Hot roux deflates beaten whites on contact and you will get a cheese pudding rather than a soufflé.
- Whites onlyThere are no yolks in this at all. Beat them to firm, not dry, peaks; over-beaten whites break into curds and refuse to fold in evenly.
- A speck of cayenneAbout 1/16 teaspoon, a pinch between finger and thumb. With only 1/4 cup of cheese it is doing real seasoning work, not just heat.
- The cheeseThe recipe does not specify a variety; a dry, hard grating cheese works best here. Pre-shredded cheese carries anti-caking starch and will make the base gluey; grate it yourself.
- Dish and yieldThis is a small quantity, roughly a pint of batter. Use a buttered 1-quart dish and count it as two servings, or divide between two 1-cup ramekins, which will need less time than the full dish.
- Serve at onceThe instruction is not decorative. Have the plates on the table before the dish leaves the oven; ten minutes' delay costs most of the rise.
Chapters headed "Whites of Eggs" were a fixture of turn-of-the-century American cookbooks, and they existed for a practical reason: custards, mayonnaise, sauces and gold cake all consumed yolks and left the whites behind. Rather than waste them, writers assembled a repertoire of meringues, white cakes, boiled icings and yolkless soufflés. The technique itself is straightforwardly French: a thick béchamel lightened with beaten whites, a method generally associated with French professional kitchens and carried into English-language household books through the nineteenth century, where it was steadily simplified for cooks working without a brigade.