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Quenelles of Veal

A dish of veal quenelles made with a creamy panada, eggs, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Quenelles of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the panada

  1. Melt 1 oz of butter in a clean saucepan and stir in 2 oz of flour with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add 1½ cups of white stock.

  3. Place the saucepan over the heat and stir until it thickens and boils. This mixture is called panada.

  4. Pour the panada onto a plate and set aside to cool.

Prepare the veal

  1. Remove skin, fat, and gristle from the veal and cut it into small pieces.

  2. Pound the meat well in a mortar.

  3. Place a wire sieve over a plate and rub the meat through the sieve with a wooden spoon.

Mix and shape

  1. When cold, combine half the panada, half the meat, and 1 egg in the mortar and work to a creamy consistency.

  2. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the remaining panada, another egg, and the rest of the meat into the mortar.

  4. Mix thoroughly and transfer to a basin.

  5. Butter the inside of a sauté pan.

  6. Prepare a basin of boiling water, fill a dessert spoon with the mixture, and shape it into an oval with a knife, dipping the knife in hot water to prevent sticking.

  7. Use another dessert spoon dipped in boiling water to scoop the quenelle from the first spoon to the second, placing it in the sauté pan until all the mixture is used.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

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

Fillet of veal
Provides the lean meat that forms the body of the quenelles.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the stock into panada, giving the mixture body and stability.
Butter
Enriches the panada and adds richness and flavour to the quenelles.
White stock
Liquid that cooks with the flour and butter to form the panada.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smoother, softer texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Working the panada into the meat. The panada must be cold and the mixture worked to a smooth, creamy consistency before shaping. Warm or lumpy mixture loosens or curdles, so the quenelles may fall apart or cook up dense and grainy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

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

“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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