Skip to main content
Main

Ln Matelotte Sauce

A sauce made with brains, white wine, cayenne pepper, lemon juice, onions, truffles, quenelles, mushrooms, crayfish, and a crouton.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Ln Matelotte Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Cut the drained brains into scallops and arrange them in a circular order on the croustade.

Make the sauce

  1. Make the matelotte sauce by combining white wine, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  2. Add small button onions that have been simmered in butter, truffles cut into scallops, quenelles, mushrooms, and crayfish tails to the sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Crown the top with 6 large crayfish and place a fried crouton shaped like a leaf in the center.

  2. Serve with a large truffle in the center of the crouton.

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. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Brains
Provide the main delicate, creamy texture of the dish when cut into scallops and served.
Truffles
Add a strong, earthy aroma that gives the dish its distinctive flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and body to the sauce, balancing the richness of the other ingredients.
Lemon juice
Adds brightness and acidity that lifts the flavour of the sauce.
Crayfish
Contribute sweet, delicate shellfish flavour and a firm texture as the crowning element.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, pepper, lemon, truffle, mushroom, crayfish, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, pepper, lemon, truffle, mushroom, crayfish, bread. 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.

More matelotte sauce recipes

Brains in 3 See all 3 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes