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Chicken Souffle

A baked chicken soufflé made with eggs, milk, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour, salt, pepper, and onion juice.

  3. Gradually add the milk or chicken stock, then mix in the bread crumbs.

  4. Add the slightly beaten egg yolks and chopped chicken.

Bake

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. If desired, add the chopped mushrooms.

  3. Pour the mixture into a baking dish set in a pan of hot water.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until firm.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 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

Eggs
Egg whites whipped stiff trap air, lifting the soufflé as it bakes, while yolks enrich the custard.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a sauce that holds the soufflé together.
Milk or chicken stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving the soufflé a softer, more stable structure.
Chicken
Provides the main savory filling and protein, distributed through the set custard.

The step that matters

Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Folding gently preserves the air whipped into the whites. Stirring or deflating them causes loss of lift, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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