Peggy's voice is frantic over the phone, babbling and apologizing for something.
"Peggy, slow down and tell me what happened," Daniel pleads. He's already half out of his office chair and ready to spring into action. "Wait, you did what?"
"I invited the Jarvises over for dinner tomorrow night, and Ana asked me if they could bring anything, and I said no, we would take care of it. Oh my god, Daniel, what have I done?"
"Okay, let's stay calm and figure this out. What do you know how to make?" he asks.
There's a long pause on the other end. "I can make tea. Um, I think I can do a decent job with scrambled eggs. Beans on toast."
"Beans on toast?" Daniel shudders at the thought. "We're not making that for the Jarvises."
"Well, what's your grand idea, then?"
"Uh." Peggy knows damn well that he can't cook either. "We'll make a…soufflé. Yeah, that's it."
"A soufflé." He imagines her raising an eyebrow.
"What, how hard can it be?"
They choose Daniel's kitchen as the rendezvous point, since Peggy's oven starts smoking when she tries turning it on and Daniel has more space anyway.
"This is preposterous; I don't understand why you need a special dish for this." Peggy frowns as she examines the brand new soufflé dish closely. She's wearing an apron patterned with sunflowers, and it's the cutest thing Daniel has ever seen.
"Look, I'm just following the recipe, and it says to use a soufflé dish," Daniel points out. He sets aside his crutch and rolls up his sleeves. Peggy is covertly checking out his biceps, which he doesn't mind at all. "Okay. The Jarvises are coming over at 6:00. We have two hours."
"Yes, Chief," Peggy salutes him. "Where do we begin?"
He consults their recipe, which Rose scribbled down for him the other day. ("Good luck," she told him solemnly, as if she was sending him off into battle or something.)
"Okay, one thing at a time. Melt butter and add three tablespoons of flour." He turns on the burner and drops the butter and flour into the saucepan together and waits.
"Aren't you supposed to mix it?" Peggy asks anxiously.
"Oh. Right," he says. He grabs a spatula and starts stirring, but the heat is too high and the flour is already sticking to the saucepan. Peggy's watching him closely and it's making him nervous. "Peg, why don't you whip up the egg whites?"
Daniel's already starting to sweat as he pours the milk into the pan and tries to squash down the lumps of flour. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Peggy struggling to separate the yolks from the egg whites. She drops a yolk on the floor and catches him watching her.
"What are you looking at?" she demands irritably as she cleans up the mess. "You have no idea how disappointed my mother would be."
"Is she a good cook?"
"She's divine. I've always been her worst pupil." She hands Daniel the bowl with the yolks and starts whipping up the egg whites. "Is something burning?"
"Damn it!" he says, turning off the gas. The mixture has somehow turned thick and lumpy and it definitely seems burnt on the bottom. He checks the time—how has an hour already passed? Too late to start over now. He adds in the yolks. "How are the egg whites coming along?"
"Uh," Peggy says. "The recipe says to beat them into 'stiff peaks.' What does that mean? How do I know when the peaks are stiff enough?"
He has absolutely no idea. The mixture looks sort of foamy but not especially peak-like. "Keep going? I think it might take a long time."
She shakes her head and keeps whisking, muttering something under her breath.
"You got something to say, Carter?"
Peggy smiles brightly. "Chief Sousa, making a soufflé was definitely one of your better ideas. 'How hard can it be?'"
If they weren't expecting company, he'd shove the egg whites to the side and start making out with her on the kitchen counter. That will have to wait until later. "I can take over if you're getting tired," he offers.
She happily hands over the bowl. "What else do we need to do?"
"Grate the cheese?" He starts whisking, and it's not long before his arm is tired too. He remembers watching his mother whipping up egg whites into a fluffy cloud for a meringue. Even after fifteen straight minutes of whisking, it looks nothing like what his mother could do, and now they're really running out of time.
"I guess this will have to be good enough," Daniel sighs, defeated. They add the egg whites and cheese to his lumpy flour mixture and pour it into the soufflé dish.
Peggy gasps and says, "We forgot to grease the dish," at the same time Daniel says, "We forgot to turn on the oven."
They both stare at the sad, uncooked soufflé for a moment. Peggy unties her apron and collapses on the couch while Daniel grabs his crutch and limps over to the phone. "This is all my fault. I'll call the Jarvises and tell them something came up."
"Wait," Peggy says, sitting up. "Don't call the Jarvises. Call Ming's Kitchen. We'll do takeout. You go get the food and I'll clean up this mess."
"You're brilliant, Peg."
She looks pleased with herself. "I know. Also, let's never speak of this again."
Edmund and Ana Jarvis take dinner parties seriously. They've brought wine, flowers, appetizers, dessert, and even their own tablecloth and place settings. They politely pretend to not notice the takeout containers as they lay out the tablecloth. Peggy has a feeling that Edmund is never going to let her live this one down. ("You're a very talented individual, Miss Carter," he tells her later. "I didn't know you could cook Chinese food too.")
Later, after the Jarvises have gone home and Peggy and Daniel are both still slightly tipsy, they fall into bed together. Peggy starts laughing.
"What's so funny?" Daniel asks, propping himself up on his elbows.
She reaches up and kisses him. "Nothing, nothing. I just had an idea, that's all."
When Daniel's birthday comes around in a few months, Peggy buys him a soufflé instead of a cake. He does the same thing for her birthday, and then for their anniversary. Then there's the Christmas soufflé, the Easter soufflé, the engagement soufflé, and eventually the wedding soufflé. And so it goes for years and years after that.