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Dessert

Croustade De Kognon De Yeau

A French croustade filled with veal kidney, mushrooms, parsley, and bread crumbs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Croustade De Kognon De Yeau

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the veal kidney and its fat together.

  2. Fry the mushrooms in butter, then chop and mix with the kidney, parsley, and shallot if using.

  3. Add bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and the egg to bind the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fry the bread slices in butter until golden, then place the kidney mixture on top about 1 inch high.

  2. Sprinkle fine bread crumbs over the mixture and drizzle with melted butter.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden brown and serve hot.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal kidney
Forms the savory, meaty body of the filling.
Egg
Binds the chopped filling and bread crumbs together so it holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the filling body, with crumbs on top for browning.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the bread slices and topping brown.
Bread slices
Form a crisp, golden base that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Fry the bread slices in butter until golden. The bread base must brown well before the filling goes on. Fully crisped bread resists soaking up the moist kidney mixture, so the base stays firm rather than turning soggy in the oven.

Swap the shallot

The recipe marks shallot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, butter, parsley, bread, pepper, egg):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, butter, parsley, bread, pepper, egg. 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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