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Chicken Souffle

A baked dish of minced chicken mixed with cream sauce, herbs, and eggs, folded with egg whites and baked until risen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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.

Prepare the base

  1. Mince the cooked chicken finely.

  2. Combine the chicken with the cream sauce, parsley, onion juice, egg yolks, salt, pepper, and mace.

  3. Cook the mixture for 2 minutes, then let it cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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. 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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped air that lifts the mixture and gives the soufflé its light, risen texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich the base and help it set into a tender, custard-like structure as it bakes.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the soufflé soft rather than dry.
Cooked chicken
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the soufflé.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air only while they are still full of trapped bubbles. Folding gently keeps that air in the mixture; stirring hard deflates it, and the soufflé will rise poorly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, sauce, parsley, onion, 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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