Skip to main content
Main

Meat Souffle

A baked dish of cold cooked meat folded into a thickened milk and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 base

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk or cream and thicken with butter and flour.

  2. Season with chopped parsley and onion juice.

  3. Stir in the cold meat.

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

Bake and serve

  1. Once cool, gently fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

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

  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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and thicken the base, while whipped whites lift the mixture and give the soufflé its rise.
Butter
Enriches the base and, with flour, forms a thickened roux that gives body to the milk.
Flour
Thickens the milk with butter into a smooth sauce that holds the meat and supports the soufflé's structure.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base, adding moisture and richness to the soufflé.
Cold cooked meat
Provides the main filling and flavour, bound into the sauce base.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites hold air only when stiffly beaten, and deflating them while folding makes the soufflé rise poorly. Fold gently and keep the base cool enough that it does not collapse the foam.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, 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