Name: Vol-au-vent of Croquettes
Ingredients: veal; ham; calves' brains; pale gold frying oil; small mushrooms; minced truffles; lemon or lemon-pickle; rich white sauce

Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vol-au-vent of Croquettes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make croquettes the size of a pigeon's egg using equal parts veal, ham, and calves' brains.
Fry the croquettes in oil until they are pale gold in color.
Prepare a rich white sauce and stir in small mushrooms or minced truffles.
Add lemon or lemon-pickle for an acidic flavor.
Fill the vol-au-vent with the mixture just before serving.

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.

Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,900 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together815 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together516 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

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, ham, mushroom, truffle, sauce):

Lemonthe original
Red currantfits about as well
Applefits about as well
Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, mushroom, truffle, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.