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Chicken Souffle

A steamed chicken soufflé made with butter, eggs, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chicken Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the chicken finely.

  2. Pound the chicken in a mortar, gradually adding the butter and eggs.

  3. Once well pounded, pass the mixture through a fine sieve.

  4. In a separate bowl, whip the cream and gently fold it into the chicken mixture.

Steam and serve

  1. Grease a tin or bowl with butter.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared tin, cover with greased paper.

  3. Place the tin in a pan with a tightly fitting lid, filled with 1 inch of water that steams but does not boil, for 30 minutes.

  4. Remove from the pan, turn out, and coat with a good white sauce. Decorate with truffles if desired.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Chicken + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicken
Forms the main body of the souffle and provides its savoury flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set with gentle heat to give the souffle its structure.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the mixture stay tender.
Cream
Whipped and folded in to lighten the texture and add moisture.

The step that matters

Steaming without boiling. Water that boils rather than steams can make the outside cook too fast and the texture coarse or watery. Gentle steam heats the mixture evenly so the eggs set smoothly and the souffle stays tender.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, butter, cream, 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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