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Meat Souffle

A baked dish of finely chopped meat, butter, flour, milk, herbs, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  3. Gradually add the warm milk, stirring until smooth.

  4. Add parsley, onion juice, salt, and pepper to the sauce.

Bake

  1. Mix in the chopped meat, celery salt, and egg yolks until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

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

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

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help set the mixture as it bakes.
Chicken and veal
Provide the meat that gives the soufflé its main flavor and body.
Warm milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that holds the other ingredients together.

The step that matters

Stirring the warm milk into the roux. Adding the milk gradually while stirring keeps lumps from forming, so the sauce stays smooth and evenly thickened before the eggs and meat are added.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, chicken, veal, butter, flour, milk, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, chicken, veal, butter, flour, milk, onion. 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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