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Truffles, Stewed in Champagne

Truffles stewed in champagne with bacon, salt, nutmeg, optional vegetables, herbs, and veal stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Truffles, Stewed in Champagne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the truffles for a couple of hours, then rinse them in several waters and scrub thoroughly.

  2. Lay the bacon slice at the bottom of a stew pan, add the truffles, salt, nutmeg, and any optional vegetables and herbs you choose.

Stew

  1. Pour a little veal stock over the truffles and let them simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the champagne and simmer for another 30 minutes, keeping the pan closely covered.

Serve

  1. Serve the truffles either cold on a silver dish with sauce in a tureen or hot with the reduced liquor poured over them.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the main flavour and aroma that the whole dish is built around.
Dry champagne
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity as it simmers and reduces into the cooking liquor.
Veal stock
Supplies savoury body and depth to the simmering liquid.
Fat bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the pan that the truffles absorb as they cook.

The step that matters

Keeping the pan closely covered while simmering. A tight lid traps the aromatic vapours and keeps the liquid from evaporating too fast, so the truffles stay moist and absorb the flavour of the champagne and stock.

Swap the carrot

The recipe marks carrot as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, nutmeg, turnip, onion, parsley, thyme, clove):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Parsnipfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, nutmeg, turnip, onion, parsley, thyme, clove. 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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