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Cheese Souffle (Easily and quickly made)
A cheese souffle is easily and quickly made and must be eaten as soon as it is removed from the oven. Cook together in a saucepan a tablespoonful of flour and one of butter; then add a half cupful of milk, stirring all the time until smooth and thick. Now add four tablespoonfuls of grated Parmesan cheese and a good pinch each of pepper and salt. Remove from the fire and stir into the mixture the well beaten yolks of three eggs and, last of all and lightly, the whites whipped very stiff. Turn into a greased baking dish and bake until it is puffed up to twice its original size and is a bright brown in color. This souffle will be large enough for four persons.
A compact béchamel-based soufflé that depends almost entirely on how the whites are folded and how promptly it is served. The original gives no oven temperature or time, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe base must be warm but not hot when the yolks go in, and the stiff whites should be cut in with a spatula in two or three additions until barely combined. Streaks of white are preferable to a deflated batter.
- Oven temperatureBake at about 375F. Much hotter risks browning the top before the centre sets; much cooler tends to give a slack rise.
- TimingIn a small greased dish of about 3 to 4 cups capacity, allow 20 to 25 minutes. It is done when doubled, deep brown on top, and only slightly tremulous at the middle.
- "Bright brown"Period phrasing for a well-coloured top, not a scorched one. If the surface darkens before the interior sets, drop the heat rather than covering it.
- The cheeseFour tablespoons of grated Parmesan is a modest, salty amount for half a cup of milk. Modern pre-grated Parmesan is drier and often cut with anti-caking starch; grate it from a block and taste before adding the full pinch of salt.
- Dish and riseGrease a straight-sided dish and, if you like a taller rise, dust the butter with fine breadcrumbs or extra Parmesan so the batter can climb. A wide shallow dish will spread rather than puff.
- ServingThe instruction to eat it at once is not decoration. It will begin to sink within two or three minutes of leaving the oven, so have the table ready. Four servings as written is generous only as a first course; as a light main it stretches to two.
Cheese souffl hrough French professional practice, where the panade of flour and butter thinned with milk, enriched with yolks and lightened with whipped whites, was standard by the mid-nineteenth century; the name comes from the French souffler, to blow or puff. Recipes of this kind routinely omit oven temperatures because ranges had no thermometers; cooks are often said to have judged heat by hand, by flour scorched on the oven floor, or by experience with their own stove.