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Quenelles

Quenelles are small, smooth dumplings made from suet and egg, cooked in salted water and served in brown sauce with optional seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and lobster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Quenelles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the suet paste

  1. Melt the chopped suet in a double saucepan over low heat, ensuring no water touches it.

  2. Strain the melted suet into a bowl.

  3. Whisk the suet until foamy.

  4. Quickly mix in the raw egg and the suet in three portions until smooth.

  5. Optionally add chopped parsley, truffles, or mushrooms for flavor.

  6. Dust a board with flour.

  7. Shape the mixture into small sausages.

Poach the quenelles

  1. In a large pot, bring 1 gallon of salted water to a boil.

  2. Drop the quenelles into the boiling water, cooking a dozen at a time.

  3. When they rise to the surface, let them sit for 1 minute without boiling.

  4. Remove the quenelles with a slotted spoon.

  5. Drain the quenelles on a napkin.

Finish the sauce and serve

  1. Heat the brown sauce.

  2. Add mushrooms, sweetbread, or seafood to the sauce.

  3. Add lemon juice to the sauce.

  4. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  5. Stir in Madeira or sherry.

  6. Thicken the sauce with arrowroot if necessary.

  7. Add the quenelles to the sauce.

  8. Keep the dish warm.

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. Sauce + lobstertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Shrimp + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together403 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Crayfish + lobstertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together100 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Shrimp + crayfishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together90 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + crayfishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 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

Suet
Melted and whisked, it sets the quenelles with a light, rich body as it cools.
Raw egg
Binds the suet mixture so the quenelles hold their shape while poaching.
Brown sauce
Forms the main liquid base that the quenelles are finished in.
Arrowroot
Thickens the sauce to a glossy consistency when it is too thin.
Madeira or sherry
Adds aromatic depth and a touch of sweetness to the sauce.

The step that matters

Poaching the quenelles. Keep the water just below a boil and cook only a dozen at a time. A rolling boil can break the delicate suet shapes apart, and crowding drops the water temperature so the quenelles cook unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, sauce, mushroom, shrimp, crayfish, lobster):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sauce, mushroom, shrimp, crayfish, lobster. 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.

More quenelles recipes

Veal 21Chicken 13of Fowl 11Fish 8Lobster 7Meat 6 See all 18 →

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