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Fifty Lunches

A chilled macaroni mousse made with cream, Parmesan, ham, and garnished with aspic and endive leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and ham work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 144 recipes. Both carry 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine, which smells cocoa, roasted. The science ↓

Fifty Lunches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mousse

  1. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks.

  2. Fold in the grated Parmesan, chopped ham, and cooked macaroni.

  3. Fill small molds with the mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Chill the molds in a cold place until firm.

  2. Turn out the molds onto a plate and garnish with broken aspic and endive leaves.

  3. Serve with mayonnaise sauce if desired.

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. Parmesan cheese + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together144 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  2. Parmesan cheese + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,566 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  3. Cream + hamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Cream + endivetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Parmesan cheese + endivetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped cream
Adds air and volume, giving the mousse a light, soft texture.
Grated parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the mousse set firm when chilled.
Cooked macaroni
Provides bulk and a soft, starchy body to the mousse.
Chopped ham
Adds savory, salty flavor throughout the mousse.

The step that matters

Folding in the mixture gently. Folding keeps the air trapped in the whipped cream. Stirring or overmixing deflates it, leaving a dense mousse instead of a light one.

Swap the endive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parmesan cheese, cream, ham):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parmesan cheese, cream, ham. 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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