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Quenelle Meat

A savory meat mixture shaped into quenelles and poached in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Quenelle Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Scrape the veal finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Mix in the flour.

  3. Add the water and cook well.

Form the quenelles

  1. Transfer the mixture to a mortar with the eggs, lemon juice, and seasoning. Pound the mixture thoroughly.

  2. Pass the mixture through a wire sieve.

  3. Shape the mixture into quenelles using two wet dessert spoons.

  4. Lay the quenelles on a greased sauté pan.

Poach

  1. Pour in enough boiling water to cover the quenelles. Poach gently for ten minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Veal or chicken
Provides the main body of the quenelles once scraped and pounded fine.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the mixture with the water so it holds its shape.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set firm during poaching.

The step that matters

Cook the flour and water well. Cooking the butter, flour and water thoroughly gelatinises the starch and removes raw flour taste. Undercooked starch leaves a pasty texture and can make the quenelles soft and hard to shape.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, flour, 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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