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Quenelles of Veal

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Quenelles of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a saucepan and mix in 2 ounces of flour with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add ½ cup of second white stock and stir until it boils and thickens.

  3. Pour the mixture onto a plate and let it cool.

  4. Trim the skin and fat from the veal and cut it into small pieces.

  5. Pound the veal pieces in a mortar until well ground.

  6. Pass the pounded meat through a wire sieve into a bowl.

  7. Once the panada is cool, mix half of it with 1 egg in the mortar and pound to a cream.

  8. Add half of the pounded veal, salt, and pepper, and mix well.

  9. Incorporate the remaining panada, add another egg, and the rest of the veal, then pound again until combined.

  10. Transfer the mixture to a basin.

  11. Butter a sauté pan.

  12. Shape the mixture into ovals using a dessert spoon and a knife.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, flour, egg, mushroom, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, egg, mushroom, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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