Skip to main content
Main

Meat Souffle

A savory dish of meat folded into a beaten egg mixture and baked until set.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a cream sauce by combining hot milk, fat, cornstarch, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Season the sauce with chopped parsley and onion juice.

  3. Stir in the chopped meat and heat until hot.

  4. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and cook for 1 minute, then set aside to cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake until set.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce and whites, beaten stiff, lift the soufflé as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Starch thickens the hot milk into a cream sauce that holds the mixture together.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving body and moisture to the soufflé.
Chopped meat
Provides the main filling and flavor of the soufflé.
Fat
Adds richness and smooths the texture of the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that makes the soufflé rise. Vigorous stirring knocks that air out, so the result bakes flat and dense.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, pepper, parsley, meat, 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes