Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Montglas of Truffles and Oysters
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare a mixture of truffles, mushrooms, and cooked lobster claw meat with a few spoonfuls of reduced veloute sauce. Keep warm in a bain-marie.
Make a salpicon with trimmed poached oysters, reduced veloute sauce, oyster liquor, and anchovy essence. Cool and shape into small olive-like pieces.
Mold quenelles using fish forcemeat and stuff them with the olive-shaped salpicon. Cover with more forcemeat and smooth the surfaces.
Poach the quenelles in salted water without boiling until the forcemeat stiffens. Drain on a cloth.
Serve the montglas in the center of a rice border, arrange the quenelles upright around it, and lightly cover with prepared sauce.
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.
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Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,057 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together470 recipes
Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
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Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,900 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,095 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together603 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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