Name: Quenelles of Chicken, Veal or Rabbit
Ingredients: 10 ounces raw meat; 6 ounces panard (bread crumbs); 2 tablespoons thick béchamel sauce; 1 ounce butter; 2 ½ eggs; red pepper to taste; a little coarse sea salt

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 Chicken, Veal or Rabbit

Ingredients

Directions

Pound the raw meat until smooth.
Pound the panard separately until fine.
Pass the panard through a sieve.
Mix the panard with the béchamel sauce, butter, eggs, red pepper, and salt.
Add 2 tablespoons of cream and mix well.
Form the mixture into shapes using spoons.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Brown Bread461 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

Meat Croquettes52 recipes

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Quenelles of Chicken, Veal or Rabbit