One of my hundred-year-old cookbooks has a recipe for chicken souffle, and I had some left-over chicken so decided to give it a try. The Chicken Souffle was lovely. The recipe called for chopped onions, thyme, and parsley, and they added a nice flavor to the dish.
Here’s the original recipe:
The old cookbook does not give an oven temperature for baking the souffle. When I made this recipe, I baked it at 350° F. The recipe says that this needs to bake for only 20 minutes, but it took close to 40 minutes for it to set and ligthtly brown when I made it. Maybe the author used a higher temperature.
Here’s the recipe updated for modern cooks:
Chicken Souffle
1 cup cooked chicken, chopped
2 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons onions, finely chopped
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
dash pepper
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried parsley
1 cup milk
Melt the butter in a sauce pan, and stir in chopped onions. Sauté for several minutes until the onions are transparent. Stir in the flour, salt, pepper, thyme, and parsley. Gradually, add the milk while stirring constantly. Continue stirring until the white sauce thickens. Remove from heat.
In another bowl, beat egg yolks until smooth. Add a tablespoon of the hot sauce to the beaten egg yolk and stir quickly. Repeat with another tablespoon of the sauce. Then add the egg mixture to the sauce and quickly stir. (This helps keep the egg yolks from cooking when they are stirred into the sauce). Add the chopped chicken and stir again. Allow the mixture to cool. (I put it in the refrigerator for a few minutes.)
In the meantime, preheat oven to 350° F. Put the egg whites in a mixing bowl and beat until peaks form. Then fold the beaten egg whites into the chicken mixture. Put in a 1-quart baking dish. Place in oven and bake until the souffle is lightly browned (about 30-40 minutes). Remove from oven and immediately serve.
Sounds really delicious Sheryl, and I’m sure you could swap out any left-over meats here.
How true- the original recipe suggests that a mixture of veal and chicken or chicken and ham could be substituted, but the recipe would be just as good with no chicken and some other meat. When I read the substitution suggestion about veal and chicken, it made me wonder if veal was much more common a hundred years ago than it is now.
I believe it was. Even when I was a kid, I remember my mom often bought ground veal in the supermarket, something we never see around here now.
I agree, it does sound really delicious and something different to make.
It’s a little different from many of the typical dishes we make today. But it’s good. Not sure why this type of recipe seems to be somewhat out of style today.
Perhaps it was considered more of a women’s light luncheon meal?
That makes sense, and sounds like how they might have thought about souffles a hundred years ago.
I would love a ladies’ lunch I think! I used to enjoy having friends for “high tea.”
I recently read that souffles do need to cook at a higher temperature. It looks like 375 is the magic number in most recipes, and I found an outlier with 350 and 400. This looks really good, though and quite pretty. I love souffle and used to make it fairly often. I should try this one!
That’s good to know about the temperature. I looked in one of my 1970’s era cookbooks and came up with the 350. It apparently was an outlier.
Outliers are wicked in research, and apparently, in cooking! It still looked pretty, delicious, and a delicate golden brown and I would eat it!
I like your comparison with research. It resonates with me.
😀
Oh yum!!!😋
It’s tasty.
mouth watering!