Susan Expected Us to Know What We Were Doing


I have avoided soufflés for most of my adult life.

Not because I dislike them, but because soufflés carry stories. Stories of doors slammed shut, of ovens opened too early, of proud dishes collapsing like punctured balloons while guests politely insist they weren’t that hungry anyway. Soufflés have a reputation for exposing overconfidence. They are the culinary equivalent of saying something brave in a meeting and immediately realizing you misread the room.

So naturally, the next recipe in the 1963 Good Housekeeping Cook Book, sitting there without ceremony, offered no warnings.

We are still cooking our way through Susan’s section of the book, a part of the volume that speaks in a voice both reassuring and faintly unbothered by your feelings. Susan, whoever she was, writes as if you already know what you’re doing, or at least ought to. There are no motivational asides. No “don’t worry if it looks wrong.” Just instructions, presented as facts. Melt butter. Stir flour. Add milk. Add cheese. Separate eggs. Beat whites stiff but not dry. Fold. Bake. Serve at once.

That tone alone felt like a challenge.

We didn’t even own a proper double boiler, which felt, for a moment, like the universe intervening on behalf of my long-held soufflé avoidance. But my wife, who has a much lower tolerance for culinary superstition, simply set a chafing dish into a pan of simmering water and said, “That’s a double boiler.” And she was right. Susan never specified brand or pedigree. She only cared that the heat behaved.

That would turn out to be the lesson of the evening.

As the cheese sauce came together, I grew uneasy. It thickened faster than expected. It looked like it might cross some invisible line from sauce to mistake. Every instinct said stop. Every story I’d heard about botched soufflés whispered that this was the point where things go wrong.

But Susan’s recipe didn’t blink. So we didn’t either. We stirred. Constantly. Patiently. The sauce loosened, smoothed, and settled into something confident again. The book had anticipated this moment. It simply didn’t feel the need to narrate my anxiety.

The egg whites were another quiet test of pride. Susan suggested a fork or hand beater, a sentence that reads today like a character-building exercise. We tried. We laughed. We course-corrected. Out came the electric mixer. The book, had it been sentient, would not have objected. Its loyalty was to outcome, not virtue.

And then came the folding, the most delicate part, where ego does real damage. You don’t rush a soufflé mixture. You persuade it. You make room for air without insisting on control. This is where the team effort mattered most. One of us folding, the other watching, calling out when to stop, when to trust that enough really was enough.

This was never a solo project.

The oven door closed. We waited. No peeking. No pacing. No dramatic countdown. Just quiet attention and a kitchen that smelled like butter, cheddar, and a kind of earned optimism.

When it came out, it did not perform. It did not tower. It did not demand applause. It simply was. Evenly risen. Lightly browned. Holding its shape the way Susan’s recipes so often do, calmly, without theatrics.

Cutting into it felt like crossing a line I’d drawn for myself years ago for no good reason. The interior told the truth immediately. Proper structure. Fine bubbles. Rice suspended where it belonged. Green beans evenly distributed, not sinking, not dominating. Nothing collapsed. Nothing apologized.

I realized then that I had never really been afraid of soufflés.

I had been afraid of silence.

Modern cooking culture thrives on spectacle. Big flavors. Big claims. Big personalities telling you that success requires fearlessness, flair, or a custom pan endorsed by someone with a podcast. Susan offers none of that. Her section assumes competence, patience, and cooperation. It rewards attention, not bravado.

And it worked because we worked together. One person improvising tools. One person reading ahead. One person was stirring while the other watched the clock. No heroics. No lone genius. Just shared judgment and a willingness to trust a process older than our doubts.

The soufflé didn’t fall.

Neither did we.

Susan’s Cheese-and-Rice Soufflé

Ingredients

  • 1 cup cooked rice

  • 2 tablespoons butter or margarine

  • 3 tablespoons flour

  • 3/4 cup milk

  • 1/2 pound process sharp Cheddar cheese

  • 4 eggs

  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

  • Dash cayenne pepper

Instructions

  1. Prepare cooked rice. Start heating oven to 325°F. In double boiler, melt butter. Stir in flour until smooth, then milk. Cook, stirring, until thickened. Slice cheese thinly, right into sauce, cooking, stirring occasionally, until cheese is melted and sauce thickened.

  2. Separate eggs, placing whites in large bowl, yolks in small one. To yolks, add salt and cayenne. Beat with fork, slowly add to cheese sauce, stirring constantly. Remove sauce from heat. Fold in rice.

  3. With electric mixer or hand beater, beat whites until stiff but not dry. Gently fold into cheese-rice mixture. Turn into a 1½-quart greased casserole. To form crown, with spoon make shallow path in cheese-rice mixture about 1 inch in from edge all the way around.

  4. Bake, uncovered, 40 minutes. Serve at once. Or, if dinner is delayed a bit, leave in oven, with heat turned down to 250°F, just a few minutes. Makes 5 servings.

Vegetable Style (optional variation)
Just before folding in egg whites, add 1 cup chopped, cooked broccoli or cooked green beans.

And in Susan’s quiet, unassuming corner of the book, that feels like exactly the outcome she expected all along.

Location: Eden, MD, USA

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