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Meat Souffle

A baked dish of cream sauce, chopped meat, eggs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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. Make 1 cup of cream sauce and season with chopped parsley and onion juice.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of chopped meat into the sauce and heat until hot.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of 2 eggs and cook for 1 minute.

  4. Set the mixture aside to cool.

Bake and serve

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

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

  3. Serve immediately, optionally 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 thicken the base and whites, beaten stiff, lift the mixture so it rises and sets in the oven.
Cream sauce
Provides a smooth, rich base that holds the chopped meat together and adds moisture.
Chopped meat
Supplies the main filling and savoury flavour of the soufflé.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be stiffly beaten and folded in gently so the air bubbles are not knocked out. Those bubbles are what make the soufflé rise in the oven; overmixing leads to a flat, dense result.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sauce, onion, meat, egg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce, onion, meat, egg, butter. 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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