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Truffles a LA Serviette

Truffles cooked in veal gravy and champagne, served in a napkin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Truffles a LA Serviette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Select the finest truffles, discarding any with a musty smell.

  2. Wash the truffles well with cold water, brushing them and changing the water several times.

Braise

  1. Line a stewpan with slices of bacon and add the cleaned truffles.

  2. Add a bunch of parsley, green onions, thyme, bay leaves, cloves, and sweet basil.

  3. Pour in enough rich veal gravy to cover the truffles, then add champagne.

  4. Boil gently for one hour.

  5. Let them cool in the gravy.

Serve

  1. Reheat the truffles in the gravy when ready to serve.

  2. Lift them out and drain them in a clean cloth.

  3. Serve neatly in a white napkin.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Form the dish itself, and their aroma carries through the braising liquid.
Rich veal gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury depth while the truffles cook and cool.
Champagne
Adds acidity and aromatic lightness to the braising liquid.
Slices of bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour to the base of the pan.

The step that matters

Boil gently for one hour. A gentle simmer, not a hard boil, lets the truffles soften and absorb flavour without breaking apart or toughening the flesh.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, parsley, thyme, clove, basil, veal, champagne):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, parsley, thyme, clove, basil, veal, 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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