Effort is its own reward

Sometimes, making a frozen soufflé can teach you a life lesson.

Several years ago, I attended a cooking class that had just three students — my wife, a man whose last name I remember was Fillion and me. We were responsible for cooking a three-course lunch under the watchful and very helpful eye of a kind and patient chef.

Dessert was a frozen Grand Marnier soufflé. It was not a traditional soufflé with more egg white than yolks; it was actually closer to an impossibly light ice cream, with more yolk than whites.

The signature height above the rim of the dish that made it a soufflé came instead from whipped cream. We made six portions of each course, as I recall, so that meant whipping an entire pint of heavy cream by hand.

First, Mr. Fillion whipped the cream. He whipped and he whipped and he whipped until his arm ached and he could whip no more. So he handed off the bowl to me, and I whipped and I whipped and I whipped until my arm ached and I could whip no more.

But we had completed the task: The cream had attained perfect soft peaks.

In one-armed agony, I asked the chef if we couldn't have whipped the cream with a machine.

"Of course," he said with the sort of smile that makes me regret those nice things I said about him being kind and patient.

I may have been unhappy for a moment, but here's the thing: I have been whipping cream and egg whites by hand ever since.

What the chef taught us, in his genially sadistic way, was to understand the organic connection between cook and food. You appreciate whipped cream more when you whip it by hand. You feel as if it is part of you, and you are part of it.

Call it pride of ownership, if that's too touchy-feely for you, or pride of creation. You have more at stake with a meringue when you have put in the time and the...