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Chicken Souffle

A baked chicken soufflé made with a white sauce, eggs, and chopped chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Mary Ronald · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Make a white sauce by melting butter in a saucepan or double boiler. Add flour and cook briefly without browning. Gradually add milk, stirring until smooth. Season with salt, pepper, parsley, and onion juice. The sauce should be one cupful.

Add the chicken and eggs

  1. Remove the sauce from heat and stir in the beaten yolks of three eggs; then add a cupful of finely chopped chicken. Stir the mixture over the fire for a minute until the egg thickens slightly; then set aside to cool.

  2. Rub a little butter over the top to prevent crust formation.

  3. When ready to serve, beat the whites of the three eggs very stiff. Stir them lightly into the cold chicken mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Put the mixture into a pudding dish and bake in a hot oven for twenty minutes.

  2. Serve immediately in the same dish.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1000Calories
60 gProtein
30 gFat
119 gCarbs

Counts 9 of 10 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 9 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Chicken100g cooked165
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Onion1 medium (110g)44
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Saucenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Mary Ronald. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the base while whites, beaten stiff, lift the soufflé as it bakes.
Butter
Enriches the white sauce and adds richness and flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that holds the chicken and gives the soufflé body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce.
Chicken
Provides the main flavour and substance of the soufflé.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites very stiff and fold them in lightly. Stiffly beaten whites trap air that expands in the oven to lift the soufflé. Overbeating makes them grainy and deflating, and heavy stirring knocks out the air, so the rise is lost.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, chicken, onion, sauce, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, chicken, onion, sauce, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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