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Plovers with Chestnut Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 517 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plovers with Chestnut Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut artichoke bottoms into quarters.

  2. In a pot, combine chestnuts, egg yolks, and lemon juice.

  3. Cover and stew on low heat for 1 hour.

  4. If the sauce is thin, mix butter and flour, then add to the pot and stir until thick.

  5. Remove the plovers from the pot and pour the sauce over them.

  6. Garnish with additional roasted chestnuts.

  7. For plovers' eggs, boil for 10 minutes and serve hot or cold on a napkin.

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. Chestnut + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + chestnuttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together381 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 (egg, chestnut, butter, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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

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