Fiona, thank you for that link!

Much as I want to lovelovelove all things Who, that article pretty much speaks for me (only much more intelligently than I could muster) and, while it made me snort, it does make me sad.

-t, I think 'the recipe is not the souffle' is supposed to be some sort of koan about the road not being the journey. (map not the territory, romance not the love...I dunno.)

It feels like we are supposed to be transfixed, waiting for some sort of twisty, too clever by half, outcome that will make us all feel dumb for not having followed its genius.

Then, we'll be fully satisfied that the convoluted 'she's impossible' recitations will suddenly make all the sense in the many worlds because...well, it will actually make sense somehow.

Or, I could just be bitter.

But she doesn't say "the recipe is not the souffle". She says "the souffle is not the souffle. The souffle is the recipe."

I think.

I've been thinking of it along the lines of soffles are tricky so the metaphor is souffle-specific (it wouldn't work with chocolate cake or beef stew, say). Its not just the ingredients, its the whole "recipe". As long as you had beef and vegetables and whatnot you could screw up any number of things and still have a beef stew. With a souffle if you screw up you've just got some yummy cheesy egg stuff.

So she's still Clara Oswin Oswald wherever and whenever she goes as long as the recipe is right. Somehow across time and space "eggs" and "cheese" are assembled AND combined correctly and yet again we get her. She, herself, is not the definition of Oswin -- its the recipe that creates her each time that makes her her.

But her souffles never turn out right. So is she not really her? Or is just having the recipe enough and the fact that her souffles are not really souffles is irrelevant because she has the recipe?

I don't get it. But I like souffles, so I want to.

Hmm... So maybe them (her) not turning out perfectly is immaterial since what matters is not the souffle (girl) but the recipe?

Maybe. I can see the metaphor as it applies to Clara, sort of, but I still don't understand what it means when you are talking about souffles.

Didn't the conversation arise because she told the kids it was her mother's soufflé, and they said words to the effect of - how can it be her soufflé, isn't it just her recipe? And then she said, the soufflé is the recipe (or vice versa).

I'm sure it's meant to be all deep and everything, but to be honest the fact that we're having to debate it at all annoys me, like so much of this past season. It's all pseudo depth and unsatisfying pay-offs.

Also, soufflés? Really not that hard to make.

That is part of my frustration, Fiona. That souffles are not that hard. They can't sit around waiting, but that is a different issue.

Now that you have reminded me of the original context, I am more annoyed. If she had just said "The recipe is the souffle" at that point, that would have made sense and that would work for Trudy's metaphor but bringing in the whole "the souffle is not the souffle" and saying it's something her mother always said - why would anyone always say that? It does not make sense to me.

I liked Clara best when she was a Dalek thinking she was making souffles every day, is why this bothers me so much, I think.