Home › A Calendar of Dinners › Chicken Souffle
Chicken Souffle
2 cups cold roast chicken, a 1/4 cup cold boiled ham or tongue, 5 tablespoons Crisco, 2 tablespoons flour, 1/2 cup cream, 3/4 cup chicken broth, a 1/4 cup chopped nut meats, salt and paprika to taste, and 4 eggs beaten separately. The chicken, ham or tongue should be chopped very fine before measuring. Melt 3 tablespoons Crisco in a frying pan; add the chopped meat and stir over fire until Crisco is absorbed. Make a sauce of 2 tablespoons Crisco, the flour, broth and cream. Pound the meat in a mortar, adding meanwhile the sauce. Press the whole through a fine sieve; add the nut meats, seasonings and yolks of eggs. Mix thoroughly, and fold in the whites of eggs. Bake in a Criscoed dish till firm in the center. Serve with mushroom or tomato sauce. This may also be cooked in individual dishes. 25 minutes will be needed for cooking in a large dish, about 12 minutes in individual dishes. It is better to cook a souffle too long than too short a time always, provided that the temperature be kept about 208 degree F.
A leftovers dish dressed as an entrée: cold roast chicken pounded to a paste with a thick white sauce, lightened with beaten egg whites. The only real difficulty is the pounding, which a food processor settles in seconds.
- That 208°F figureToo low to be an oven setting; it most likely refers to the temperature the mixture itself should be held near, which would explain why the original says it is better to cook a souffle too long than too short. The book gives no oven temperature; a moderate oven of about 325-350°F is the usual modern equivalent, and standing the dish in a pan of hot water helps keep the mixture from setting grainy.
- CriscoCrisco was new when this book was written and the book exists to sell it. Any neutral solid shortening works, and butter works better; use 3 tablespoons for frying the meat and 2 for the sauce, and butter the baking dish.
- The mortar stepPounding cooked chicken to a smooth paste with the sauce is the hinge of the recipe — unpounded chopped meat will sink and the soufflé will be coarse and heavy. A food processor does it in 30 seconds; the sieving afterwards is still worth doing if you want the classic texture.
- Tongue and hamThe quarter cup of cold boiled ham or tongue is there for salt and depth. Boiled tongue is a special-order item now; prosciutto cotto or good baked ham is the practical substitute, and reduce the added salt accordingly.
- Nut meats"Nut meats" means shelled nuts, chopped. Almonds or walnuts suit this best. Chop them fine, or they will puncture the foam as you fold.
- Cream and brothUse heavy cream and unsalted stock.
- Dish size and yieldThe mixture serves four as a lunch or supper course. In a large dish use a 1½-quart straight-sided baking dish filled no more than two-thirds; individual ramekins take about 12 minutes, a large dish about 25, and it should be set and barely trembling at the center.
- FoldingBeat the whites to soft, not stiff, peaks — stiff whites will not blend into a paste this heavy without being knocked flat. Stir a third in to loosen the base, then fold the rest in two additions.
A Calendar of Dinners belongs to a genre that flourished in the 1910s: the cookbook published by a manufacturer to teach cooks how to use a new product. Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening introduced by Procter & Gamble in 1911, was unfamiliar enough that the company commissioned Marion Harris Neil to write recipes in which it replaced butter, lard and suet " hto bake in a "Criscoed" dish. The dish itself is older than the fat: a chicken soufflé of this kind, built on a pounded forcemeat and a flour-thickened sauce, belongs to the family of French panada-based mousseline preparations.