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Truffles, Bottled

Truffles preserved in bottles with thyme, salt, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and thyme work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Truffles, Bottled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Soak the truffles in fresh water for 1–2 hours.

  2. Wash them well in several waters and brush until clean.

  3. Pare the truffles and place them in dry bottles.

Bottle and cook

  1. Add a sprig of thyme, coarse sea salt, and cold water to each bottle.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly and secure them with string.

  3. Wrap the bottles in hay to prevent cracking.

  4. Place the bottles side by side in a large saucepan.

  5. Pour in enough cold water to reach the necks of the bottles.

  6. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer for 30 minutes.

  7. Let the bottles cool completely before handling.

Store

  1. Wax the corks and store the truffles in a cool place.

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 + thymetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
The main ingredient, preserved whole in the bottle with salt and water.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the truffles and helps preserve them in the bottle.

The step that matters

Bring the water to a gentle simmer, not a hard boil. Sealed bottles cooked too hard can crack or let the contents overheat unevenly. A gentle simmer heats the truffles slowly and evenly, which helps keep them intact and well preserved.

“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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