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Chicken Souffle

A baked chicken mixture with eggs, cream sauce, and herbs, topped with buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the chicken, salt, pepper, parsley or celery, lemon juice, and cream sauce.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until combined.

Bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish.

  2. Top with bread crumbs mixed with melted butter.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten whites trap air for lift, and yolks enrich the custard-like body.
Cream sauce
Provides the moist, binding base that holds the chicken together.
Chicken
Supplies the main protein and savory body of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form a golden, crisp topping through browning.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give the soufflé its rise. Stirring or deflating them too vigorously knocks out air, so the result bakes flat and dense.

“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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