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Truffles, Piemontaise Style

A sauce made with Madeira wine, truffles, anchovy butter, and fresh butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Truffles, Piemontaise Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Reduce the Madeira wine sauce in a saucepan.

  2. Add the truffles with their juice and warm thoroughly.

  3. Warm the gravy again and mix in the anchovy butter and fresh butter off the heat until melted.

  4. Pour the sauce over the truffles 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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Madeira wine + truffletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes
  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira wine sauce
Forms the base of the sauce, adding body and a rich, wine-based flavor as it reduces.
Truffles
Provide the earthy, aromatic flavor that defines the dish.
Anchovy butter
Adds a savory depth that rounds out the sauce without tasting distinctly fishy.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a glossy, smooth texture when melted into the sauce.

The step that matters

Melt the butters off the heat. Whisking the butters in off the heat lets them melt gently and emulsify into the sauce. Over high heat the butterfat can separate, leaving the sauce greasy and broken.

“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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