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Chicken Souffle

A baked chicken and cream sauce soufflé made with eggs, onion juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,814 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Chicken Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the mixture

  1. Stir the chicken into the boiling cream sauce and cook for 2 minutes.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks and let the mixture cool.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

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.

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

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Cream + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Cream and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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
Egg whites trapped by folding lift the mixture, giving the soufflé its rise and airy texture.
Cream sauce
Forms the thick, creamy base that holds the chicken and gives the soufflé its body.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main substance and savory flavor of the soufflé.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air only while they are whipped. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense instead of light.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, cream, sauce, egg, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, sauce, egg, pepper. 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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