Skip to main content
Main

Chicken Souffle

A baked dish of minced chicken and cream sauce folded with eggs, served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Chicken Souffle

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the mixture

  1. In a boiling cream sauce, add the minced chicken and yolks of the eggs.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Butter a baking dish and pour in the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the baking dish in a larger pan with boiling water.

  2. Bake for 20 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately with tomato 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich the mixture while whipped whites lift it and give the souffle its airy structure.
Cream sauce
Provides moisture and a smooth, rich base that holds the chicken together.
Cooked chicken
Forms the main body and flavor of the souffle.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives a souffle its rise. Overmixing or deflating them while folding, or adding them to a mixture that is still hot, causes the batter to lose volume and become dense.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, cream, sauce, onion, egg, butter, tomato. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipes