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For Turtle, Mock Turtle, or Made Dishes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

For Turtle, Mock Turtle, or Made Dishes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the veal in a marble mortar.

  2. Rub it through a sieve with the udder and butter.

  3. In a stew-pan, moisten the bread-crumbs with milk.

  4. Add chopped parsley and eschalot, and rub together in a mortar until smooth.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve and let it cool.

  6. Pound and mix with the hard-boiled egg yolks.

  7. Season with salt, pepper, and curry powder or cayenne.

  8. Add the raw egg yolks and mix well.

  9. Form small balls and add them to the soup ten minutes before serving.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, bread, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, bread, milk, egg, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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