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Meat Souffle

A baked meat soufflé made with a white sauce, eggs, and chopped meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat 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 white sauce

  1. Make a smooth white sauce by blending butter and flour in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Gradually add milk, stirring until thickened.

Season and mix the base

  1. Season with parsley, grated onion, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in beaten egg yolks and chopped meat.

  3. Boil the mixture for 1 minute.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately with mushroom sauce.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites whipped into the base give the soufflé its light, risen structure, while yolks enrich it.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a white sauce that holds the soufflé base together.
Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form the roux base for the white sauce.
Milk
Liquid that gelatinises with the flour to create a smooth, thick white sauce.
Chopped meat
Adds substance and savoury flavour to the soufflé base.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg whites intact. Stirring or deflating them removes that air, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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