Name: Quenelle
Ingredients: 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon chopped chervil; 2 teaspoons chopped chives; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 teaspoon shallot; 1 small bottle Bequinot’s Fine Herbs Sauce; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Why it works: Chervil and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 370 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Quenelle

Ingredients

1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped chervil
2 teaspoons chopped chives
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon shallot
1 small bottle Bequinot’s Fine Herbs Sauce
¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

Directions

Combine parsley, chervil, chives, sugar, shallot, Fine Herbs Sauce, and salt in a saucepan.
Stew gently for 30 minutes.
Serve in an entree dish, pouring the sauce over the fillets.

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.

Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together370 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chervil + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together266 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chive + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together774 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chervil, chive, sugar, shallot, sauce):

Capersfits better
Tarragonfits better
Parsleythe original
Garlicfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chervil, chive, sugar, shallot, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.