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Truffle Puree

A sauce made from truffle puree, butter, brown sauce, glaze, and truffle essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and butter 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 ↓

Truffle Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Wash, brush, and peel the truffles.

  2. Pound the truffles with 1 ounce of butter and press through a fine sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the truffle puree with ½ pint of brown sauce and bring to a boil for 10 minutes.

  2. Just before serving, dissolve 1 ounce of glaze and 1 ounce of butter in the sauce.

  3. Add 2 tablespoons of essence of truffles if available.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes

Butter and sauce 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

Fresh truffles
Provide the main flavour and aroma of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sauce.
Brown sauce
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the truffle flavour.
Glaze
Adds body and concentrated savoury flavour when dissolved into the sauce.

The step that matters

Pound the truffles with butter and sieve. Pressing the truffles into a fine puree distributes their aroma evenly through the sauce. Coarse pieces left behind would give uneven flavour and a gritty texture.

“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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