Name: Quenelles of Rabbit Aux Champignons
Ingredients: fillets of rabbit; mushrooms; butter; cream; salt; pepper

Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Quenelles of Rabbit Aux Champignons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fillets of rabbit by finely chopping them.
Sauté the mushrooms in butter until tender.
Combine the rabbit, mushrooms, cream, salt, and pepper in a bowl.
Shape the mixture into quenelles using two spoons.
Poach the quenelles in simmering water until cooked through.
Serve hot with a sauce of your choice.

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.

Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Rabbit + creamtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together409 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).
Rabbit + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together406 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).