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Potage De Quenelles a LA Viennoise

A creamy soup of small quenelles made from bacon, bread, flour, eggs, and Parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potage De Quenelles a LA Viennoise

Ingredients

Directions

Make the bacon and bread mixture

  1. Cook the diced bacon in clarified butter until golden.

  2. Add the diced bread and cook until colored.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly.

  4. Mix in flour, egg, nutmeg, and cream.

Make the dough

  1. Melt butter in another pan.

  2. Stir in flour to make a roux and cook briefly over low heat.

  3. Add enough cream to form a soft dough.

  4. Dry the dough for five minutes.

  5. Once cool, mix in Parmesan, nutmeg, and egg yolks.

Shape and serve

  1. Combine both mixtures and form small quenelles.

  2. Test a quenelle in boiling consommé.

  3. Adjust seasoning and consistency if needed.

  4. Place quenelles in a lightly buttered dish.

  5. Bring the consommé to a boil.

  6. Pour the boiling consommé over the quenelles.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor to the mixture as it renders in the clarified butter.
Bread
Adds body and a toasted texture that helps the mixture hold together.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the dough structure.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the quenelles hold their shape when poached.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the dough set smoothly and firmly.
Cream
Adds moisture so the flour and egg form a soft, shapeable dough.

The step that matters

Test a quenelle in boiling consommé. If the dough is too wet it will fall apart in the hot liquid, and if too dry it will be heavy. A test quenelle shows whether the dough needs more binding or moisture before the batch is formed and poached.

“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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