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Dessert

In Matelotte Sauce

A dish of brains, truffles, quenelles, mushrooms, and crayfish served in a matelotte sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

In Matelotte Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the tripe brains as directed in No. 786 and drain on a napkin.

  2. Cut the drained brains into scallops.

Make and assemble

  1. Arrange the scallops in a circular order in a croustade.

  2. Make the matelotte sauce with white wine, cayenne, lemon juice, and small button onions simmered in butter.

  3. Add truffles, quenelles, mushrooms, and crayfish tails to the sauce.

  4. Crown the top with large crayfish.

  5. Place a fried crouton shaped like a leaf between the large crayfish.

  6. Put a large truffle in the center.

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

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

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 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

Trie brains
Provide the tender, delicate main filling that is cut into scallops and arranged in the croustade.
Large crayfish
Form the showy crown on top and supply the sweet, firm shellfish flesh.
Truffles
Add a deep, earthy aroma that flavours the dish throughout.
White wine
Gives the matelotte sauce its acidity and body, balancing the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Make the matelotte sauce. The sauce must be balanced and not too thin or too reduced, since it binds the brains, crayfish and truffles together. Its acidity from wine and lemon juice must be controlled so it does not overpower the delicate shellfish.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, sauce, pepper, onion, butter, truffle, mushroom):

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, sauce, pepper, onion, butter, truffle, mushroom. 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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