How Jacques Pépin Turned His Mother's Mistake Into One Of His Most Beloved Dishes

Jacques Pépin started his training at the age of 13 in his hometown of Lyon, considered the gastronomical capital of France. He cooked at the world-famous Plaza Athénée in Paris and was the personal chef to Charles de Gaulle. With these accolades, he moved to America, where he turned down working at the White House for the Kennedys and instead worked as the director of research at Howard Johnson's restaurants to bring a love of food to everyday Americans. His much-loved recipe for his mother's soufflé embraces this ethos that good food is for everyone.

When Pépin's parents married, his mother knew how to cook only a few recipes; her husband's favorite, cheese soufflé, wasn't one. "She told me that when she married my father, he loved souffle. She never made a souffle in her life," Pépin said on his YouTube channel, "Home Cooking with Jacques Pépin."

At the time, she couldn't Google "how to make the perfect soufflé" and get pages of recipes; she just had to figure it out. She knew it consisted of béchamel, cheese, and eggs, but she didn't know about the fussy part: Separating the egg yolks from the whites and whipping the whites to the perfect peak to delicately fold into the mix. Instead, she cracked her eggs straight into the béchamel and cheese mix and whisked them in one by one. "It worked," Pépin added in his video. "Differently than a regular souffle, but it's much, much easier to do."

His mother's resulting soufflé wasn't as tall and fluffy as the classic, but it was still delicious. It was a little sturdier, meaning you could pre-make it to bake the next day. And it was the perfect recipe for the budding home chef.

There's a reason this dish is beloved: It cuts out the fussy, difficult-to-execute step of separating the egg whites from the yolks and whipping the whites into a fluff that is hard to maintain. The recipe and story behind it are from Jacques Pépin's 2003 book, "The Apprentice," and can now be found on The Food Network, The Jacques Pépin Foundation, and his YouTube channel. People are still confused about why this recipe works. In theory, it shouldn't because the fluffiness of a soufflé comes from the air pockets in the whipped egg whites, which the fat in the yolks would prevent. This recipe skips separating the two and still somehow achieves a great level of fluff! Of course it takes the writer of the book introducing American home cooks to French technique, "La Technique," and a man who studied mass production and the chemistry of food at Howard Johnson, to recognize a winning recipe that skips a major technical step.

The mistake recipe works because it is slightly more like a popover than a classic soufflé. There is still air and there is still rise; there just isn't as much as a soufflé. The whipping of the eggs still creates some air bubbles, and the heat of the oven applied to the eggs, which are 75% water, produces steam, which fills those bubbles. All that to say, it's not as cloud-like as a regular soufflé, but it's still delicious.