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Cream Quenelles

A light, poached dumpling made from a cream, butter, nutmeg, pepper, flour, eggs, and water mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream Quenelles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Combine cream, butter, nutmeg, and black pepper in a saucepan.

  2. Heat until it boils.

  3. Gradually stir in enough flour to form a stiff paste.

  4. Let the mixture cool.

  5. Once cool, stir in eggs one at a time until the mixture is thin enough to drop from a spoon.

Poach and serve

  1. Bring water to a boil in a flat stewpan.

  2. Drop in the paste by the teaspoonful.

  3. Poach the quenelles for ten minutes.

  4. Drain and serve.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the paste a tender texture once cooked.
Butter
Adds fat, which softens the paste and enriches its flavour.
Flour
Provides starch that gelatinises with heat, giving the paste body and structure.
Eggs
Bind the paste and set during poaching, giving the quenelles their firmness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs. Eggs must be added one at a time and the paste cooled first, so they blend smoothly without scrambling. The paste should be loose enough to drop from a spoon, since eggs set on contact with heat and a stiff mixture would give dense quenelles.

“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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