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Truffles, a LA Piemontaise

Truffles, à la Piémontaise, is a baked truffle and roll dish with olive oil, parsley, garlic, sauce, glaze, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Truffles, a LA Piemontaise

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the truffles

  1. Cut the truffles into scallops.

  2. Heat the oil in a sauté pan and add the truffles, parsley, garlic, mignonette pepper, and salt.

  3. Fry for 5 minutes, then remove the garlic.

Finish and bake

  1. Add the sauce, glaze, and lemon juice, and toss over the heat.

  2. Spread butter on the hollow crusts of the French rolls.

  3. Pour the truffle mixture over the rolls and place in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes to crisp.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh truffles
Provide the main flavour and aroma, and are the central ingredient of the dish.
Lucca oil
Carries the truffle aroma into the pan and helps the truffles fry evenly.
French rolls
Act as the base that soaks up the truffle mixture and crisps in the oven.
Italian or espagnole sauce
Adds body and savoury depth that binds the truffles together.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the rolls brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Remove the garlic after frying for 5 minutes. Garlic left in the hot oil keeps browning and can turn bitter, which would spoil the delicate truffle aroma. Removing it on time keeps the flavour clean.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, parsley, garlic, pepper, sauce, lemon, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, parsley, garlic, pepper, sauce, lemon, butter. 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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