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Meat Souffle

A baked dish of chopped meat in gravy mixed with beaten eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,364 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Meat Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Stir the chopped meat into the gravy or sauce and heat until hot.

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

  3. Set aside to cool.

Bake and serve

  1. When ready to use, stir in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Bake for about twenty minutes and 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. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

  2. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  3. Egg + oniontop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,333 recipes

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

Egg and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,333 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 mixture when cooked, and whipped whites lighten it and help it rise in the oven.
Chopped meat
Provides the main substance and flavor of the dish.
Gravy or white sauce
Carries the meat and adds moisture and body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Stir in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only when beaten stiff and must be folded in gently, not stirred hard. Overmixing deflates the foam, so the soufflé will rise less and turn dense.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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