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Plovers Fried with English Truffles

Fried plovers served with fresh butter and sliced English truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Plovers Fried with English Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pluck and truss the plovers as if for roasting.

  2. Place them breast down in a stewpan.

Cook

  1. Add the butter and truffles, which should be washed, wiped, pared thin, and sliced.

  2. Include the cloves, bay leaf, and salt.

  3. Cook over low heat until the plovers are done.

  4. 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. Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Truffle + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-pinene (pine, resin).

  3. Butter + clovetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,045 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Plovers
Provide the main meat, which cooks gently in the butter until tender.
Fresh butter
Carries the heat and adds richness, moisture and browning to the birds and truffles.
Raw truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma and flavour that infuses the butter and birds.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until the plovers are done. Low heat cooks the birds through gently in the butter without scorching the milk solids or drying the meat. Too much heat would brown the butter quickly and toughen the flesh, spoiling the delicate truffle aroma.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, truffle. 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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