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A LA Milanaise

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 4,424 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Prepare ½ pint of thin sauce blanche.

  2. Stir in the egg yolk and milk or cream.

  3. Add the grated cheese and mix well.

  4. Pour the sauce over the cooked French beans 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,424 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + beanstop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together739 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Egg + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together88,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + beanstop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Sauce + beanstop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, egg, milk, cheese):

  1. Walnutabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Peasabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Peanutabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, milk, cheese. 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).

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