Name: Quenelles
Ingredients: meat; white stock; coarse sea salt; mashed potatoes; fried bread; Bechamel sauce

Why it works: Meat and potato work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Quenelles

Ingredients

Directions

Shape the meat into quenelles.
Heat a frying pan and slip the quenelles in.
Cover the quenelles with boiling white stock and add a little coarse sea salt.
Cook very slowly for about 20 minutes.
Remove from the pan and drain.
Serve with mashed potatoes or fried bread.
Pour a spoonful of Bechamel sauce on each and serve hot.

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.

Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together434 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).
Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,934 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,167 recipes