Name: Quenelles of Veal
Ingredients: 1 pound fillet of veal; 2 ounces butter; 2¾ ounces flour; ¾ pint second white stock; 2 eggs; 1 dozen button mushrooms; ⅓ cup cream; 1 teaspoon lemon juice; Salt to taste

Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 Veal

Ingredients

Directions

In a stewpan, mix 1 ounce of butter and 2 ounces of flour with a wooden spoon.
Add ⅓ cup of second white stock and stir until it boils and thickens.
Pour the mixture onto a plate and let it cool.
Trim the skin and fat from the veal and cut it into small pieces.
Pound the veal pieces in a mortar with a pestle until smooth.
Pass the pounded meat through a wire sieve into a plate.
Once the panada is cold, combine half of it with 1 egg in the mortar and pound to a cream.
Add the remaining panada, the second egg, and the rest of the meat, and pound well together.
Transfer the mixture to a basin.
Butter a sauté pan and shape the mixture into ovals using a dessert spoon and a knife.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 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).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,633 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, egg, mushroom, cream):

Lemonthe original
Coconutfits about as well
Vanillafits about as well
Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, egg, mushroom, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.