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Quenelles of Game

Quenelles of game are small, smooth balls made from minced game meat, butter, spices, mushrooms, and soaked bread, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Quenelles of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove skin, bones, and sinew from the cold game or poultry.

  2. Mince the meat finely and pound it in a mortar with butter, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and chopped mushrooms.

  3. Soak the crumb of the French roll in gravy and squeeze out the moisture.

  4. Combine the soaked roll with enough gravy to absorb, stirring over heat until smooth and it leaves the sides of the pan.

  5. Mix in the unbeaten yolk of the egg and let it cool.

  6. Pound the mixture with the other ingredients until well blended.

Shape and fry

  1. Chill the mixture for 1-2 hours, then mold into balls.

  2. Dip the balls in egg and bread crumbs, then fry in hot fat until browned, about 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Drain on blotting paper and serve with brown or mushroom sauce.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Game or poultry
Provides the main meat body and flavor that forms the quenelle.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the mixture moist and tender.
French roll
Soaked in gravy to bind the mixture and add softness.
Egg
Binds the mixture and, as a coating, helps bread crumbs stick and brown.
Mushrooms
Add earthy aroma and moisture to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Cooking the gravy-roll paste until it leaves the pan. Stirring over heat drives off excess moisture and partly sets the starch from the roll, so the paste is firm enough to chill and shape. If it stays wet, the balls will be soft and may fall apart in the hot fat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, mushroom, 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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