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Vol-au-Vent

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 ↓

Vol-au-Vent

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Rub the fowl pieces with lemon to make them whiter.

  2. In a stewpan, melt ½ cup of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour, stirring until well combined.

  3. Gradually add 2 cups of white stock while stirring to mix the flour.

  4. Season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, a small bouquet of herbs, and 10 small onions.

  5. Bring to a boil, then add the fowl pieces, cover with buttered paper, and simmer gently for 1 hour, shaking the pan occasionally.

  6. Prepare white mushrooms for garnish.

  7. For the quenelles, finely chop 2 ounces of veal, 2 ounces of sausage meat, and 2 ounces of beef suet.

  8. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf, then pound in a mortar.

  9. Slowly add the beaten egg while pounding to form a paste.

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. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + meattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, butter, flour, onion, mushroom, veal, meat):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

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