Name: Blanquette of Veal or Lamb, with Mushrooms
Ingredients: cold veal or lamb; mushrooms; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); butter; flour; cream; lemon juice

Why it works: Mushroom and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 12,516 recipes mention both. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal or Lamb, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Slice the white part of cold veal or lamb very thinly.
Trim the meat into scallops no larger than a shilling.
Place the scallops in a clean saucepan or stewpan.
Wipe the mushrooms with a clean cloth and add them to the pan.
Season with coarse sea salt and add butter.
Sprinkle flour over the mixture and stir well.
Add cream and a splash of lemon juice, then simmer until cooked through.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Mushroom + buttertop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together12,516 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,494 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Veal + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together122,858 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mushroom + creamtop 7% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together4,500 recipes

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

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, butter, flour, cream):

Coconutabout as good a flavor fit
Strawberryabout as good a flavor fit
Lemonthe original
Appleabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, butter, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).