Soufflé de Volaille with Cooked Meat

Soufflé de Volaille (cooked-chicken soufflé) teaches a severe little truth: the whites can lift only what the base has made smooth. Before touching a pan, know this one thing. The chicken and cold reduced Béchamel must become a fine, concentrated paste, warm but never boiled, or six perfect whites will have nothing even to carry.

The book's kitchen assumed cooked breast waiting from service, a mortar and tamis, a saucier with reduced Béchamel and Suprême sauce ready, and chicken stock never off the fire. Your food processor and fine sieve do the pounding and passing; one straight-sided porcelain dish replaces the metal timbale, while the finished Suprême sauce warms gently beside it. A salamander has no work here, since moderate oven heat must set the centre as the soufflé rises. The formula already gives four generous main-course servings, so its full one-pound chicken ratio stays intact rather than mangling five yolks and six whites into fractions. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Staffed sauce work is scaffolding and can go; the pounding, the tamis, the gentle warming, the five yolks, and the six stiff whites are the dish and must stay. Fold with a broad, light hand and bake at once. The moment that decides it comes before folding: the base must be smooth, supple, and only warm when the yolks enter.