Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Souffle

A baked chicken soufflé made with milk, butter, flour, bread crumbs, eggs, and chopped chicken.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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 base

  1. Make a white sauce by heating milk, flour, butter, salt, and pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Add the bread crumbs and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Stir in the chopped chicken, beaten egg yolks, and parsley.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour into a buttered pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Egg whites trap air when beaten, lifting the souffle as it bakes; yolks enrich and set the custard.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter into a white sauce that holds the souffle together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, giving a soft, moist texture.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, helping the mixture hold its structure.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main filling and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold the air that makes a souffle rise. Stirring or deflating them vigorously knocks out this air, so the souffle bakes flat and dense. Fold slowly with a spatula, and bake promptly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, bread, egg, chicken, 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipes