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Quenelles of Pike, with Mushrooms

A French-style fish quenelle made from pike, bread crumbs, milk, butter, egg yolks, and served with sautéed mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Quenelles of Pike, with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and panada

  1. Clean the pike and remove the fillets from the backbone.

  2. Cut the fish into pieces.

  3. Soak the bread crumbs in tepid water, then press out excess water.

  4. In a small saucepan, combine the soaked bread crumbs with a few spoonfuls of milk and boil, stirring until it forms a paste.

  5. Let the paste cool.

Make the quenelle mixture

  1. Pound the pike flesh until smooth.

  2. Mix in the panada and half the butter.

  3. Pound the mixture for 5-6 minutes, seasoning it.

  4. Add the egg yolks one at a time, continuing to pound.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve and smooth it in a bowl.

  6. Test a small amount in boiling water for seasoning.

Shape, poach and serve

  1. Mold the quenelles using two tablespoons and place them in a buttered flat saucepan or baking sheet.

  2. Poach the quenelles in boiling salted water.

  3. Meanwhile, sauté the mushrooms in lemon juice and the remaining butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Pike
Provides the lean flesh that is pounded into the light, delicate body of the quenelles.
White bread crumbs
Soaked and cooked into a panada that binds the mixture and keeps the quenelles tender and moist.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the mixture so it holds its shape when poached.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender texture in the quenelles and mushrooms.
Button mushrooms
Sautéed in butter and lemon juice to add savoury flavour and browning alongside the quenelles.

The step that matters

Pounding the mixture until smooth and seasoning it. Thorough pounding breaks the fish fibres into a fine, even paste, and proper seasoning must be tested before shaping, because the quenelles cannot be adjusted once poached.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, milk, butter, egg, mushroom. 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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