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Chicken Souffle
2 cups scalded milk 2 cups cold cooked chicken, finely chopped 1/3 cup butter 1/8 cup flour Yolks 3 eggs, well beaten 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon finely-chopped parsley 1/8 teaspoon pepper 1/2 cup stale soft bread crumbs Whites 3 eggs, beaten stiff Make a sauce of first five ingredients, add bread crumbs, and cook two minutes; remove from fire, add chicken, yolks of eggs, and parsley, then fold in whites of eggs. Turn in a buttered pudding-dish, and bake thirty-five minutes in a slow oven. Serve with White Mushroom Sauce. Veal may be used in place of chicken.
A baked savory soufflé of the Boston cooking-school type: a thick white sauce enriched with crumbs, bound with yolks, lightened with whites. It is a way of using up yesterday's roast bird.
- What goes in the sauceThe sauce is milk, butter, flour, salt and pepper — melt the butter, stir in the flour, add the scalded milk and season. The chicken, yolks, parsley and whites all go in afterward, off the heat.
- Slow ovenRoughly 300-325F. The low heat over thirty-five minutes gives an even, custardy set rather than the high, precarious rise of a hot-oven soufflé.
- 1/8 cup flourThat is 2 tablespoons. With 1/3 cup butter the roux is very fat-heavy by modern proportions; the half cup of soft crumbs is doing much of the thickening. Use 3 tablespoons flour if you want a sauce that holds a shape on the spoon.
- Stale soft bread crumbsCrumbs torn from the inside of a day-old loaf, not dried crumbs from a canister. Dry packaged crumbs absorb far more liquid and will make the mixture stodgy.
- Folding the whitesThe base must be cool enough not to slacken the foam — lukewarm at most. Fold in thirds with a spatula and stop while streaks are still faintly visible; overmixing here is the usual cause of a flat soufflé.
- The chickenTwo cups of cold cooked meat is roughly 10 oz, chopped fine rather than shredded so it suspends in the batter instead of sinking. Skin and gristle should be removed or they read as tough specks.
- Pudding-dishA deep straight-sided baking dish of about two quarts, generously buttered. No collar is called for.
- Yield and timingServes about four as a main course. Serve it straight from the oven; it will settle as it stands, and reheated it becomes dense.