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Dessert

Fifty Lunches

A sweet and savory tartlet filled with truffles, preserved cherries, apricot jam, and kirsch, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Fifty Lunches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Strain the syrup from the preserved cherries and mix with minced apricot and greengage.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the syrup, apricot jam, and kirsch; boil.

  3. Add rice flour.

  4. Strain through a fine sieve.

Assemble the tartelette

  1. Keep the rice in a mold in a cold place along with the apple quarters, mince, and syrup.

  2. Turn the rice out onto a glass dish.

  3. Fill the hollow with mince.

  4. Arrange apple quarters on top.

  5. Pour syrup over the apples.

  6. Dot with cherries using a trussing needle.

  7. Serve with cream.

Cook the truffles

  1. Clean truffles.

  2. Pare truffles.

  3. Cook truffles in equal parts chicken broth and sauterne to cover them.

  4. Add minced onion, herbs, and garlic in a muslin bag, along with butter.

  5. Boil for 10 minutes.

  6. Let truffles cool in the broth.

  7. Cut truffles into squares or slices.

  8. Thicken the broth with glaze or meat gravy, then boil.

  9. Skim the broth.

  10. Strain into another saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the truffles gently in the broth.

  2. Warm the tartelette cases.

  3. Fill them.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Rice + chickentop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Garlic + chickentop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,850 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  4. Onion + chickentop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Form the main filling, becoming tender and absorbing flavour as they cook gently in the broth.
Preserved cherries
Add sweetness and a fruity tang, with their syrup supplying most of the liquid for the sauce.
Apricot jam
Adds sweetness and body to the syrup, helping it coat the fruit.
Kirsch
Contributes a cherry-like aroma and a sharp alcoholic note to the syrup.
Rice flour
Thickens the syrup as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel to the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Heat the truffles gently in the broth. Vigorous boiling can break up cooked truffles and toughen them. Gentle heat keeps them whole and tender while warming them through before serving.

Swap the apricot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, flour, truffle, onion, garlic, butter, chicken):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Apricotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, flour, truffle, onion, garlic, butter, chicken. 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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