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.

I think souffles are commonly regarded as hard to make. That was always my impression anyway... I could certainly be universalizing my experience.

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.

Yeah, that was nice an spooky.

I'm a little annoyed at manic pixie dream companion... she really DOES have no needs of her how and exists just to further those of the male main character. I'd like to call it intentional social commentary but I doubt it is. OTOH, anything beats Lady Christina DeSouza (Do we KNOW why that got shot down? Was it only ever a one? Did the rest of the world find her as eye-rolly as I did?)

I admit, when I tried making one and it was actually pretty straightforward I was surprised. That is not how they are portrayed in popular culture.

But if they are difficult to pull off that would just make the recipe further from being the souffle if following the recipe doesn't guarantee a souffle. What use is having the instructions if you can't execute them? If this is some kind of platonic ideal of souffles that can not exist in the real world but is represented by the recipe, I definitely do not like that. But I don't even know if that's what it's supposed to mean, it's just nonsense pretending to be a paradox.

Man, TVD on a field trip to NO is surpassing all my guesses for how bad it would be.