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Plovers, Fried, with Truffles

A dish of plovers fried with butter and truffle slices, finished in a sherry and stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Plovers, Fried, with Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the plovers

  1. Lay the plovers breast down in a stewpan with the butter and truffle slices.

  2. Add the cloves, bay leaf, salt, and pepper, and stir gently over high heat for 10 minutes.

  3. Mix the stock with the flour and pour it into the pan along with the sherry.

  4. Simmer gently for 20 minutes, skimming the liquid carefully.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the birds to a hot dish.

  2. Boil the sauce until thick and smooth, then add lemon juice, sugar, and browning.

  3. Pour the hot sauce over the birds and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Plovers
Are the main meat, cooked whole so the breast and legs stay moist in the liquid.
Fresh butter
Browns the birds and carries the truffle aroma through the dish, adding richness.
Truffles
Add a strong earthy aroma and flavour that perfumes the butter and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that clings to the birds.
Sherry
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce as it reduces.
Lemon juice
Brightens the rich sauce with acidity, balancing the butter and sherry.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thick and smooth. Flour must cook long enough at a boil to lose its raw taste and thicken properly. Lemon, sugar, and browning go in only after thickening, since acid and sugar added too early can interfere with the starch setting and the colour developing evenly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, truffle, pepper, flour, sherry, lemon, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, truffle, pepper, flour, sherry, lemon, sugar. 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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