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Preserve

Truffles

A method for washing, cooking, and glazing truffles with wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Truffles

Ingredients

Directions

Clean and poach

  1. Wash the truffles in 2 or 3 cold waters and brush them until clean.

  2. Place them in a small saucepan and cover with enough wine to nearly cover them.

  3. Boil for 10 minutes with the lid on.

  4. Remove from heat and let them sit warm for 30 minutes.

Prepare and finish

  1. Peel and chop the truffles for use.

  2. Put the peel back in the remaining wine and simmer until reduced by half.

  3. Melt the glaze into the reduced wine and strain through a fine sieve.

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. Champagne + filberttop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Truffle + filberttop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 dish.
Wine
Carries the truffle flavour and, once reduced, adds concentrated depth to the sauce.
Glaze
Adds body and gloss to the reduced wine.

The step that matters

Boiling the truffles with the lid on. Covering the pan traps the aromatic vapours and keeps the wine from reducing too fast, so the truffles stay moist and fragrant. Boiling too hard or uncovered can toughen the flesh and drive off aroma.

Swap the filbert

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, champagne):

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, champagne. 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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