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Chicken Souffle

A baked chicken soufflé made with a white sauce, breadcrumbs, egg yolks, egg whites, parsley, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 melting the butter, then whisking in the flour, salt, and pepper before gradually adding the milk.

  2. Cook the sauce for 2 minutes, then stir in the bread crumbs.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in the minced chicken, beaten egg yolks, beaten egg whites, parsley, and sherry.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 35 minutes.

  2. Serve hot immediately to prevent the souffle from falling.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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 for lift, and egg yolks help set the custard-like structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, adding moisture and body.
Butter
Fat that enriches the white sauce and adds flavour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce that holds the mixture together.
Minced cooked chicken
Provides the main protein and substance of the dish.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites and serving promptly. Beaten egg whites trap air that expands in the oven to lift the soufflé. Over-mixing deflates them, and once out of the oven the air cools and contracts, so the soufflé falls if not served right away.

Swap the parsley

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

  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, pepper, bread, chicken, 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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