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Beef Souffle

A savory beef soufflé made with roast beef, eggs, butter, flour, mushroom ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Beef 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 sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the flour and cook for a minute.

  2. Add the mushroom ketchup, Worcestershire or anchovy sauce, beef gravy, pepper, and salt; allow to thicken.

Make the soufflé base

  1. Mince and pound the beef with the sauce, seasoning well with pepper and salt.

  2. Add the egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

  3. Pass the mixture through a sieve and fold in the chopped shallot.

Finish and bake

  1. Gently fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a soufflé dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 minutes, covering with paper to prevent burning.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Egg whites
Whipped to a foam that traps air, giving the soufflé its lift and light structure.
Egg yolks
Enrich the mixture and help bind the beef and sauce together as it sets.
Lean roast beef
Provides the main savoury flavour and the substance of the soufflé.
Beef gravy
Adds moisture and concentrated beef flavour to the base sauce.
Butter
Forms the fat base of the roux and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Cooked with the butter to thicken the sauce and give it body.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the stiffly whipped egg whites.. The whites hold the air that makes the soufflé rise. Stirring or beating them in vigorously knocks out that air, so the soufflé bakes flat and dense.

“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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