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Lobster Farce for Quenelles

A lobster-based filling for quenelles, made with stock, flour, butter, eggs, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,050 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Lobster Farce for Quenelles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the panada

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour.

  2. Add the stock or milk and cook until the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan and forms a compact mass.

  3. Set aside to cool.

Make the quenelle mixture

  1. Pound the lobster and the flour mixture together in a mortar.

  2. Add each egg separately and season to taste, then pound thoroughly.

  3. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve, then stir in the cream.

Steam

  1. Steam the mixture in small quenelle or dariol molds.

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. Lobster + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,050 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Lobster
Provides the main flavour and the delicate body of the quenelles.
Flour
Forms the panada with the butter and liquid, giving the mixture structure to hold together.
Eggs
Set when steamed, binding the mixture into a firm but tender quenelle.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture and carrying flavour.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the finished quenelle mixture.

The step that matters

Pound thoroughly after adding the eggs. Thorough pounding evenly blends the eggs into the panada and lobster, producing a smooth, uniform mixture. Uneven mixing can leave pockets that set unevenly and make the quenelles grainy or crumbly.

“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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