Skip to main content
Main

Italian Style of Dressing Truffles

A dressing for truffles made with parsley, lemon juice, salad oil, mace, garlic, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Italian Style of Dressing Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and brush the truffles.

  2. Cut the truffles into thin slices.

  3. Place the slices in a baking dish.

  4. Season with oil or butter, pepper, salt, parsley, garlic, and mace in the proportions above.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for nearly an hour.

  2. Just before serving, add lemon juice.

  3. Serve hot.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

138Calories
1 gProtein
14 gFat
6 gCarbs

Counts 5 of 8 ingredients. The other 3 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Olive Oil1 tbsp (14g)119
Lemonjuice of 1 lemon (48ml)12
Black Pepper1 tsp ground (2.3g)6
Parsley1 tbsp chopped fresh (3.8g)1
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Saladnot in our table0
Trufflenot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By F. L. Gillette and Hugo Ziemann. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Truffles
Provide the main earthy, aromatic flavour of the dressing.
Salad oil
Carries the aroma of the other ingredients and adds richness and moisture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich oil and earthy truffle flavour.
Mace
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the truffles.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, green herbal note to the dish.

The step that matters

Add the lemon juice just before serving. Heat dulls the bright, volatile aroma of citrus, so adding lemon juice at the end keeps its fresh flavour and acidity clear against the rich oil.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, lemon, truffle, pepper):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, lemon, truffle, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes