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Truffles, Piemontaise Style

A sauce of Madeira wine, anchovy butter, and fresh butter served over truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Truffles, Piemontaise Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Reduce the Madeira wine sauce in a saucepan.

  2. Add the truffles with their juice.

  3. Warm the sauce thoroughly.

  4. Warm the sauce again.

  5. Mix in the anchovy butter and a piece of fresh butter off the fire until melted.

Serve

  1. If the truffles are large, slice them; if small, leave them whole.

  2. Pour the sauce over the truffles.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Madeira wine + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes
  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira wine sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, and reducing it concentrates its flavour and body.
Truffles
Supply the aroma and earthy flavour that define the dish.
Anchovy butter
Adds savoury depth and salty umami that rounds out the sauce.
Fresh butter
Melted in off the heat, it adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Melt the butter off the fire. Whisking butter in off the heat lets it emulsify into the sauce gently. Over direct heat the butter can separate and turn greasy.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (madeira wine, sauce, truffle, anchovy, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against madeira wine, sauce, truffle, anchovy, butter. 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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