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Italian Style of Dressing Truffles

A dish of sliced truffles dressed with oil, pepper, salt, parsley, garlic, mace, and lemon juice, baked until hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Italian Style of Dressing Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and brush the truffles.

  2. Cut them into thin slices.

Bake

  1. Place them in a baking dish with oil, pepper, salt, parsley, garlic, and mace.

  2. Bake for nearly 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the lemon juice.

  2. Serve hot.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the main earthy, aromatic flavour of the dressing.
Salad oil
Carries the aromas and keeps the truffle slices moist during baking.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that mellows as it cooks in the oil.
Mace
Adds a warm, spicy aroma that complements the truffles.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that balances the rich oil.

The step that matters

Add the lemon juice after baking. Lemon juice is added once the dish has finished cooking because prolonged heat dulls its fresh, bright acidity. Adding it at the end keeps the dressing lively and balances the rich, oily truffle flavour.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, pepper, parsley, clove, garlic, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, pepper, parsley, clove, garlic, lemon. 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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