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Soup

Potage Aux Quenelles De Grenouilles

A French soup of frog quenelles poached in fish consommé, garnished with chervil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potage Aux Quenelles De Grenouilles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the quenelle mixture

  1. Pound the frog meat in a mortar and strain it through a sieve.

  2. Add the butter and panade to the frog meat, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and mix well.

  3. Once combined, add the egg and mix thoroughly.

Test and shape

  1. Test a small quenelle by poaching it in water; if too firm, adjust with double cream.

  2. Shape the mixture into quenelles the size of a pea and poach them.

Make the consommé and serve

  1. Prepare fish consommé, adding the frog carcasses, clarify, and strain.

  2. Place the quenelles in a soup tureen, add the consommé, and garnish with chervil.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + cherviltop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + cherviltop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Bread + fishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Frog meat
Forms the main body of the quenelles and gives them their delicate flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer texture in the quenelles.
Panade
Bread paste that adds body and moisture, helping the quenelles hold a tender texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the quenelles hold their shape while poaching.

The step that matters

Testing the quenelle mixture before shaping. A mixture that is too firm yields dense quenelles, while one that is too loose will fall apart. A small test poach shows whether the texture is right, and adding double cream softens it if needed.

Swap the chervil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, fish):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Chervilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, bread, pepper, nutmeg, egg, fish. 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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