Name: To Mold Quenelles with a Spoon, Either Plain, Filled or Rolled in Flour
Ingredients: forcemeat (meat mixture); butter (for greasing); hot water (for poaching); filling (optional: mushrooms, tongue, truffles, or foie gras)

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 ↓

To Mold Quenelles with a Spoon, Either Plain, Filled or Rolled in Flour

Ingredients

forcemeat (meat mixture)
butter (for greasing)
hot water (for poaching)
filling (optional: mushrooms, tongue, truffles, or foie gras)

Directions

Select two large, thin iron soup spoons. Heat one in a small pan of hot water.
Fill the other spoon with forcemeat, smoothing the top with a knife dipped in tepid water.
Ensure the forcemeat is level with the spoon. Remove the quenelle with the hot spoon, sliding it beneath the forcemeat.
Transfer the quenelle to a buttered sauté pan without turning it over.
If filling, prepare a mixture of mushrooms, tongue, truffles, or foie gras, thickened with brown sauce.
Make a small hole in the forcemeat with your finger, insert the filling, and cover with more forcemeat.
Smooth the surface and remove the quenelle with the hot spoon to the sauté pan.
Poach the quenelles by adding hot water to the pan beside them and heating until boiling.

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).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).