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Truffle Sauce

A sauce made with sliced truffles, parsley, shallot, butter, gravy, lemon juice, and cayenne.

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 ↓

Truffle Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Wash the truffles and cut them into slices about the size of a penny.

  2. In a frying pan, combine the truffles, minced parsley, minced shallot, salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Stir over medium heat for about 10 minutes until evenly cooked.

  4. Drain some of the butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Add more fresh butter, gravy, lemon juice, and cayenne.

  2. Stir until just before boiling.

  3. Serve.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 sauce.
Butter
Carries fat and flavour, and gives the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Gravy
Adds savoury depth and body to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and truffle flavour.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma as it cooks in the butter.

The step that matters

Stir until just before boiling. Butter-based sauces can separate and turn greasy if they boil. Heating gently keeps the emulsion smooth and preserves the delicate truffle aroma, which fades with high heat.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, parsley, pepper, butter, 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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