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Souffles of Chicken
Cut off about one pound of cold roasted fowl, pound it in a mortar, pass it through a hair sieve and mix with it a breakfast cupful and a half of reduced bechamel sauce; when cold, add the yolks and whites of five eggs beaten separately and a little grated nutmeg. Fill some paper cases with the mixture and bake in a hot oven for a quarter of an hour.
A classic hot soufflé built on a panade of reduced béchamel rather than flour and butter alone, and a sensible use for the back end of a roast bird. Nearly all of the work is in the sieving and the folding.
- The hinge: fold, don't stirThe whites go in last and only until no white streaks remain. Once the base is loosened with a spoonful of beaten white, the rest should be cut in with a spatula; overworking here is the difference between a risen soufflé and a dense chicken custard.
- Mortar and hair sieveA food processor does the pounding in seconds, but still push the purée through a fine sieve or tamis afterwards. Chicken fibre that escapes the sieve reads as stringiness in the finished soufflé.
- Breakfast cupfulA breakfast cup is roughly 8 to 10 fluid ounces, larger than a teacup. Read the quantity as about 1 1/2 cups of béchamel already reduced — thick enough to hold a spoon upright, not pourable.
- Reduced béchamelThe sauce must be stiff, closer to a paste than a coating sauce, or the five whites will have nothing to climb. Reduce it hard, then cool it fully: warm base will slacken beaten whites on contact, which is why the recipe says "when cold."
- A hot ovenRead this as 400-425F. Fifteen minutes is right for small individual cases; a single large soufflé would need 25 to 30 minutes and a slightly lower setting.
- Paper casesThese were stiff paper cases used for the purpose. Buttered ramekins of 4 to 6 fl oz serve the same function -- butter the sides with upward strokes and dust with fine breadcrumbs or grated cheese so the mixture can grip and rise.
- SeasoningOscar gives only nutmeg and no salt; presumably the béchamel was expected to carry it. Taste the base before the whites go in; cold chicken purée swallows a surprising amount of salt and white pepper.
- Yield and timingProbably around six individual soufflés, depending on the size of the cases; the recipe gives no number. They must go to the table straight from the oven -- a few minutes standing and they will sink.
Soufflés of leftover poultry are often said to have been common in the grand hotel and club kitchens of the 1890s, where the cold remains of roast fowl from one service reappeared, unrecognisable, as a light entrée at the next. The technique is straight out of the French repertoire that Oscar Tschirky worked within at the Waldorf: a savoury purée bound with a stiff béchamel, lightened with whipped whites, and baked in individual cases so that each diner receives one intact. The paper cases — caisses in the French usage — went to the table as they came from the oven, with no unmoulding. The dish says something about how an establishment of that size thought about thrift: nothing from a roast was wasted, but neither was anything served as an obvious remnant.