Name: Tendons De Veau a LA Purée De Laitues, or with Lettuce Purée
Ingredients: 8 to 12 cabbage lettuces; 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon good consommé; 5 to 6 tablespoons good béchamel sauce; 1 egg yolk; 2 tablespoons cream; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tendons De Veau a LA Purée De Laitues, or with Lettuce Purée

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the lettuces well and drain them on a sieve for a few minutes.
Rub the drained lettuces through a sieve with a wooden spoon and let it sit for 1 to 2 hours to remove excess water.
In a stewpan, melt the butter and stir until it begins to fry.
Add the consommé and reduce it well.
Stir in the béchamel sauce and bring to a boil.
If desired, add a little salt, then remove from heat.
In a bowl, mix the egg yolk and cream, then pour it onto a warm dish.
Lay the prepared tendons over the lettuce purée.

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.

Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together622 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, butter, sauce, egg, cream):

Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Cabbagethe original

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