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Quenelles Maigre

A fish soup with sole, eel, whiting quenelles, crayfish tails, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Quenelles Maigre

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the gills from the fish fillets and cut them into small scallops.

  2. Sauté the scallops with a pinch of coarse sea salt.

Make the broth

  1. Prepare a broth with the aromatics, fish trimmings, white wine, and consommé; simmer for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the broth through a fine cloth and pour it into a lightly buttered sauté pan.

  3. Add the washed and drained scallops to the pan.

  4. Boil for 10 minutes.

Assemble and finish

  1. Remove the sole scallops and transfer them to a soup tureen.

  2. Simmer the eel fillets for 5 minutes, then drain and add them to the soup tureen with the sole scallops.

  3. Form small quenelles of whiting and add them along with the crayfish tails and mushrooms.

  4. Strain the cooking liquid from the scallops.

  5. Combine the strained liquid with the prepared consommé.

  6. Clarify the mixture.

  7. Boil for a few minutes.

  8. Remove any white foam caused by the wine.

  9. Add a sprig of chervil.

  10. Pour the soup into the soup tureen and serve.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Wine + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,632 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).

  3. Crayfish + whitingtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + crayfishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together343 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  5. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Forms the delicate scallops that give the soup its main body of white fish.
Eel
Adds a firm, rich fish texture to the soup as it is poached separately.
Whiting
Forms light, tender quenelles that hold their shape in the hot broth.
White wine
Flavours the broth with acidity and aroma, and its foam is skimmed off during cooking.
Crayfish tails
Contribute sweet, firm shellfish meat to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Remove the white foam caused by the wine. Proteins in the wine and fish rise to the surface as a grey-white foam when heated. If left in, it clouds the broth and spoils its clean appearance, so it should be skimmed off carefully as it forms.

“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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