Name: Cailles a LA Jardiniere
Ingredients: 8 quails; braised lettuce; carrots; turnips; green beans; cauliflower; demi-glace sauce

Why it works: Carrot and turnip are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 8,001 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare 8 quails as for an entrée and cook them as previously described.
Create a border in a mold.
Fill the border with braised lettuce.
Fill the center with a mixture of carrots, turnips, and green beans.
Place the quails on the border and add a small bouquet of cauliflower between each quail.
Arrange a crown of cauliflower on the quails' backs.
Fill the center of the crown with a bouquet of green beans.
Glaze the quails and the border.
Serve demi-glace sauce on the side.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Carrot + turniptop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together8,001 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + cauliflowertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together286 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Lettuce + turniptop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together526 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Green beans + cauliflowertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together75 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Lettuce + cauliflowertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together151 recipes

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

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

Flavor stand-ins for the green beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (quail, lettuce, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, sauce):

Beetrootbetter flavor fit
Broccolibetter flavor fit
Asparagusbetter flavor fit
Green beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against quail, lettuce, carrot, turnip, cauliflower, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).