Name: Blanquettes De Veau
Ingredients: shoulder of veal; velouté sauce; egg yolks; verjuice or lemon juice; butter; minced parsley; minced young onions

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Blanquettes De Veau

Ingredients

Directions

Roast the shoulder of veal and cut the meat into pieces.
Flatten the pieces with the blade of a knife.
Remove the brown skin and mince it.
Reduce some velouté sauce and add the veal without boiling.
Thicken the mixture with egg yolks as needed.
Add verjuice or lemon juice and a bit of butter.
Stir in minced parsley and young onions, then serve.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, sauce, egg, lemon, butter, parsley):

Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Asparagusfits better
Onionthe original

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