Soufflé (Cheese Soufflé, the Rise That Cannot Be Kept)

Variations

• Sweet soufflés. Swap the béchamel for crème pâtissière and drop the cheese, and you have vanilla, chocolate or Grand Marnier. The mechanism and the handling are identical — the folding, the thumb round the rim, the closed door.
• With spinach or crab. Only if squeezed completely dry. Water left in becomes weight, and that part sinks.
• Soufflé au fromage. That is what the recipe above makes, and in France it is served as a starter.
• Twice-baked soufflés. Baked, cooled, then reheated in cream. The second rise is smaller, but you are not racing the clock.
• About the photograph. The Commons description says only "a typical example of soufflé in Japan", so it cannot be told from the picture whether it is savoury or sweet. The risen pale-gold top and the collar standing above the dish are the same either way.

Tips

• The height is not a structure, it is a state in progress. Air trapped in the foam expands with heat, and water turning to steam pushes it further. Egg protein does set around it, but that shell is thin, so when the gas cools and contracts it cannot hold. There is no way to keep the rise; the only move left is to eat it fast.
• Three ways this site handles a whipped foam. Chocolate Mousse preserves the foam by chilling it. Dobos Torte bakes the foam into permanent structure. A soufflé is baked and still does not become permanent — the same whites, three endings.
• It is the far end of the Serving Temperature list. That guide collects the dishes with no grace period — fried food, cheese that has cooled, noodles going soft in broth — and files this one past all of them. Their windows are merely short; a soufflé's maximum is the instant it leaves the oven, and everything after that is collapse.
• Do not whip the whites stiff. Soft peaks only. Over-whipped whites have already stretched as far as they go, so in the oven they tear instead of expanding, and they fold in badly too.
• Butter upwards. Sideways strokes give the batter a path to slip on; vertical strokes plus the cheese give it a ladder to climb.
• Run a thumb round the rim. That one movement is what lifts the top straight up like a hat. Without it one side catches on the lip and it rises crooked.
• The dish must have straight sides. A sloping bowl gives it no wall to climb.
• Against Éclair. That also rises on steam, but its shell sets hard and keeps the shape when it cools. A soufflé's walls are soft custard and cannot.