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Chicken Souffle

A baked dish of cooked chicken, milk, eggs, bread crumbs, and seasonings.

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a small saucepan, mix the butter and flour together.

  3. Pour in the milk and stir constantly over medium heat until boiling and smooth.

  4. Add the bread crumbs, stir, and cook for a moment.

Make the souffle

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and mix in the chicken, parsley, onion juice, salt, and pepper.

  2. Combine the chicken mixture with the milk mixture and stir well.

  3. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish and bake until set and golden.

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

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs set when baked, giving the souffle its structure and light body.
Milk
Cooked with flour and butter into a smooth sauce that gives the mixture moisture and body.
Bread crumbs
Stale crumbs soak up the sauce and help thicken the mixture into a firm, tender base.
Chicken
Cooked chicken provides the main flavor and bulk of the dish.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk, butter and flour until boiling and smooth. Stirring constantly keeps the flour from clumping. Once the starch in the flour has cooked in the boiling milk, the sauce thickens properly and gives the souffle its base.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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