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Truffles Au Gratin

Stuffed truffles baked with liver, bread crumbs, butter, wine, and brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Truffles Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Wash the truffles. Dry the truffles.

  2. Scrape out the insides without damaging the peel.

  3. Chop the insides finely.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the chopped insides with an equal amount of chopped cooked fat liver.

  2. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

  3. Moisten the mixture with a little brown sauce.

  4. Stuff the truffle halves with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Sprinkle the stuffed truffles with bread crumbs.

  2. Drizzle warmed butter over the top.

  3. Place the truffles in a flat-bottomed saucepan or gratin dish.

  4. Moisten the truffles with a little wine before baking.

  5. Bake the truffles.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Truffle + livertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  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

Black truffles
Provide the main earthy aroma and flavour of the dish.
Cooked fat liver
Adds richness and a creamy, moist texture to the filling.
Brown sauce
Moistens the filling so it stays tender and cohesive during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on top through browning in the oven.
Warmed butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and a rich flavour on the crust.

The step that matters

Scrape out the insides without damaging the peel. The peel acts as the container that holds the filling during baking. A torn peel lets the filling leak and the aroma escape, so the truffle halves lose their shape and flavour.

“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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