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Cold Meat Soufflé

A soufflé made with finely chopped cold beef, stock, eggs, and breadcrumbs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cold Meat Soufflé

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.

Prepare the base

  1. Weigh the prepared beef and chop it finely.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the flour, butter, stock, salt, and pepper. Boil together until thickened.

  3. Allow the sauce to cool.

  4. Beat in the egg yolks.

Assemble and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff. Fold them into the mixture.

  2. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish or pie dish. Sprinkle breadcrumbs on top.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff foam, they trap air and lift the soufflé as it rises.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it set into a tender, custard-like structure.
Flour
Thickens the stock and butter into a sauce that holds the beef and eggs.
Cold beef
Provides the main meaty flavour and body of the soufflé.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, giving a softer, smoother texture.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whipped stiff but folded gently. Overmixing deflates the air bubbles, so the soufflé rises poorly and turns dense.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, sauce, egg, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, sauce, egg, flour, 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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