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Vol-au-Vent of Oysters and Other Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and fish work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 496 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Vol-au-Vent of Oysters and Other Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Order the Vol-au-Vent crust from the pastry shop on Thursday afternoon.

  2. Prepare the ragout of oysters and fish.

  3. Stuff the cod or pike and place it in a baking dish.

  4. Add butter just before baking.

  5. Wash and pick the sea-kale overnight, then wrap it in a damp napkin.

  6. Boil the haricots and prepare the poulette sauce, then heat them together.

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. Oyster + fishtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce 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 kale

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, fish, butter, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Kalethe original

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

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