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Dessert

Garniture De Quenelles Au Fromage

Cheese and ham quenelles baked with béchamel and parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and parmesan cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,041 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Garniture De Quenelles Au Fromage

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the quenelles

  1. Prepare a cheese choux pastry as previously described.

  2. Mix in the diced ham.

  3. Scoop the mixture onto a floured surface in equal portions the size of an almond.

  4. Roll them by hand and drop into boiling water.

  5. Cook for 2 minutes, then cover and let sit for 10 minutes off the heat.

  6. Drain the quenelles on a cloth and layer them in a dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle each layer with grated parmesan and drizzle with warm béchamel sauce.

  2. Cover and sprinkle the top with more parmesan.

  3. Gratin in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) for 15 minutes.

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. Cheese + parmesan cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,041 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  2. Cheese + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Ham + parmesan cheesetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cheese
Adds rich flavour and melts into the choux pastry for a savoury, stretchy interior.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour and a firmer bite throughout the quenelles.
Parmesan cheese
Browns on top during baking and adds a sharp, savoury crust.
Béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess, keeping the layers tender as they bake.

The step that matters

Simmering the quenelles. Boiling them gently and then resting them off the heat lets the choux set through without splitting or turning dense. Vigorous boiling can break them apart.

“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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