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Fontage Croustades

Meat marinated in French dressing, baked with browned crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fontage Croustades

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the meat in water seasoned with parsley, onion, bay leaf, and celery.

  2. Once cold, remove the skin and bones, and cut the meat into 1-inch square pieces.

  3. Marinate the meat in French Dressing for 1 hour.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add seasonings and fill dishes with the mixture.

  2. Cover with browned crumbs and bake for 5 minutes, or brown in the oven.

Brown the crumbs

  1. To brown the crumbs, sauté ½ cup of crumbs in 1 tablespoon of butter until brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main body and chewy texture of the filling.
French dressing
Its acidic, seasoned liquid flavors the meat during the one-hour marinade.
Browned crumbs
Forms a golden, crisp topping over the filling as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and browns the crumbs, giving a nutty, toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Browning the crumbs in butter. Butter's milk solids and sugars brown quickly and can go from golden to burnt within seconds. Cooking over steady heat and watching closely gives even browning and avoids a bitter taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, celery, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, celery, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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