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Nut Farcie

A baked dish of mashed potatoes, ground nuts, bread crumbs, and eggs, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 938 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Nut Farcie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Cook the potatoes and mash them.

  2. Grind the shelled nuts.

  3. Combine the mashed potatoes and ground nuts.

  4. Add the bread crumbs soaked in milk, whipped eggs, corn starch, and season with salt and pepper.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a buttered mold and bake in a water bath.

  2. Alternatively, form into croquettes and fry in butter.

  3. Prepare a sauce with butter, flour, and vegetable stock, mixing in cream.

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. Potato + corntop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 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

Nuts
Provide the main body and rich flavor of the dish.
Potatoes
Add starch and moisture, giving the mixture a soft, binding texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb milk and help the mixture hold its shape and texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set when cooked.
Corn starch
Thickens the mixture and helps it hold together.

The step that matters

Baking in a water bath. A water bath surrounds the mold with gentle, even heat, so the egg-based mixture sets smoothly without curdling, drying out, or browning too fast on the outside.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, bread, corn, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Beansfits better
  2. Lima beansfits better
  3. Peanutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, bread, corn, milk, egg, pepper. 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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