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Truffles Saute, Metropole

Sautéed truffles with bacon, carrots, turnips, stock, and champagne, finished with mace, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Truffles Saute, Metropole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pan

  1. Line a sauté pan with bacon.

  2. Flavor the pan with carrots and turnips.

Cook the truffles

  1. Add truffles and moisten with white stock and champagne.

  2. Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove truffles and place them on a croustade of bread.

Finish and serve

  1. Reduce the cooking liquid, skim off fat, and strain over the truffles.

  2. Season with ground mace, pepper, and salt just before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Truffle + champagnetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  5. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Are the main ingredient, becoming tender and aromatic as they simmer gently in the liquid.
Fat bacon
Lines the pan and releases fat that adds richness and savory flavor to the cooking liquid.
White stock
Moistens the truffles and forms the base of the liquid that is reduced into a sauce.
Champagne
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity to the cooking liquid as it simmers with the truffles.

The step that matters

Simmer gently with the lid on. Gentle, covered simmering keeps the truffles moist and tender while the liquid flavors them. A hard boil would toughen the truffles and reduce the liquid too quickly.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, truffle, champagne, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, truffle, champagne, 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.

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