Skip to main content
Main

Eufs De Vanneau En Croustades

A poached salmon and egg custard cutlet served on mashed potatoes and garnished with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and watercress work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 170 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Eufs De Vanneau En Croustades

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine the cooked salmon, butter, and bread panada in a mortar, pound well, and pass through a fine sieve into a bowl.

  2. Stir in the whole eggs, egg yolk, and cream, then season with salt.

  3. Test the mixture by poaching a small amount for consistency; if satisfactory, butter a dozen cutlet molds.

Shape and poach

  1. Fill the molds with the mixture, tap them on the table to settle, and smooth the surfaces with a hot palette knife.

  2. Poach the cutlets until done, then remove them from the molds.

Serve

  1. Create a mound of mashed potatoes on a serving dish, arrange the cutlets around the mound, and garnish with watercress.

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 + watercresstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon
Provides the main flesh and flavour that the cutlets are built around.
Whole eggs
Set when poached, binding the mixture into a firm, sliceable cutlet.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the mixture bind and set smoothly.
Butter
Adds fat for a softer, richer texture and flavour.
Bread panada
Absorbs moisture and gives the mixture body so it holds together.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness, keeping the cutlets tender rather than dry.

The step that matters

Testing the mixture before filling the molds. Poaching a small test portion shows whether the mixture has the right consistency. Eggs set when heated, so a mixture that is too loose may fall apart and one that is too firm will be dense when poached.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, bread, egg, cream, watercress):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, bread, egg, cream, watercress. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipes