Skip to main content
Main

Small Truffle Pates, Bennett Style

Small puff pastry shells filled with truffles, dry champagne, Madeira wine sauce, and game puree.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Truffle and champagne work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 120 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Small Truffle Pates, Bennett Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 2 dozen puff pastry shells.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the truffles and dry champagne.

  2. Cook until the moisture is reduced.

  3. Add the truffles, Madeira wine sauce, and game puree to the saucepan.

Fill and serve

  1. Fill the pastry shells with the mixture.

  2. Cover the shells and 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. Truffle + champagnetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Truffle + madeira winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes
  3. Madeira wine + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together230 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes
  5. Champagne + madeira winetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14 recipes

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 aroma and flavour of the filling.
Dry champagne
Adds acidity and aroma, and its liquid reduces to concentrate the truffle flavour.
Madeira wine sauce
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the filling.
Game puree
Adds body and a rich, savoury meaty flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Cook until the moisture is reduced. If the liquid is not reduced enough, the filling stays wet and can soften the puff pastry shells. Cooking off the moisture concentrates the flavour and gives the mixture a thick, spoonable texture before the other ingredients are added.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes