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Fontage Croustades

A casserole of boiled meat marinated in French Dressing, topped with browned bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fontage Croustades

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil meat in water seasoned with parsley, onion, bay leaf, and celery.

  2. When cold, remove skin and bones, and cut meat into 1‑inch square pieces.

Marinate and assemble

  1. Make sauce according to your recipe, add meat, and marinate in French Dressing for 1 hour.

  2. To brown crumbs, sauté ½ cup in 1 tablespoon of butter until brown.

  3. Fill dishes with the mixture, cover with browned bread crumbs, and bake for 5 minutes.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

Meat
Forms the main body of the casserole and provides the substance of the dish.
French dressing
Flavors the meat during the one-hour marinade, adding acidity and seasoning.
Bread crumbs
Forms a topping that browns in butter and adds crisp texture over the baked dish.
Butter
Browns the bread crumbs, adding richness and nutty flavor to the topping.

The step that matters

Browning the bread crumbs. Crumbs need enough butter and time to turn evenly brown; pale or burnt crumbs change the topping's flavor and crispness, and the browning reaction depends on steady heat and watching the color.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, celery, bread, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, celery, bread, butter. 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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