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Chicken Souffle

A light, airy chicken soufflé flavored with mace, pepper, and sea salt, finished with optional ham, eggs, or truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chicken Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Mince and pound the chicken well.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, and a little mace.

Make the base

  1. Make a sauce by melting the butter, then whisk in the flour and milk until it boils.

  2. Add the pounded chicken to the sauce and ensure it is well-seasoned.

  3. Once cool, mix in the beaten egg yolks.

Bake and serve

  1. Whip the egg whites to a firm froth and gently fold them into the mixture.

  2. Butter a soufflé dish and, if desired, decorate with ham, hard-boiled eggs, and truffles.

  3. Pour in the mixture and steam for 45 minutes.

  4. Turn out and serve with a flavorful béchamel, mushroom, oyster, or celery sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

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

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
Whipped whites trap air to lift the soufflé, while yolks enrich the base and help set it.
Butter
Melted into the flour to form a roux, giving the sauce body and a rich flavor.
Fine flour
Thickens the milk with butter into a sauce that holds the chicken together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving the mixture moisture and a smooth texture.
Cold chicken
Provides the main body and flavor of the soufflé once minced and pounded.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites must be whipped to a firm froth and folded gently. Overmixing knocks out the trapped air, so the soufflé rises less and turns dense.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, chicken, 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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