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Fish Soup Quenelles

Quenelles made from lobster meat, butter, egg yolks, and breadcrumbs, poached or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Fish Soup Quenelles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the meat from the lobster and pound it with the butter.

  2. Season with salt, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Blend the meat into a paste with the raw egg yolk.

  4. Mix in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs and the bread crumbs.

Shape and cook

  1. Mould the mixture into small quenelles using a teaspoon.

  2. Poach the quenelles for 2-3 minutes or fry in butter until light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy as an entrée or breakfast dish.

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

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together909 recipes

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

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

What each ingredient does

Lobster meat
Provides the main body and flavour of the quenelles.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture, and browns when fried.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the paste together and sets when poached, holding the shape.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a softer, crumbly body to the mixture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the mixture, helping it hold its shape.

The step that matters

Poaching gently. The mixture is delicate and held together mainly by egg proteins. Gentle heat sets the egg slowly so the quenelles hold their shape; a hard boil can break them apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, butter, pepper, egg, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, butter, pepper, egg, bread. 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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