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Truffles — Con Tinned

A dish of truffles cooked with bacon fat, vegetables, and champagne, served with the strained liquor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Truffles — Con Tinned

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the truffles in lukewarm water for 2 hours, then scrub and wash them thoroughly.

Braise

  1. Layer slices of bacon in a saucepan.

  2. Add the truffles, carrot, turnip, and onions.

  3. Season with cloves, mace, bay leaf, thyme, and parsley.

  4. Pour in enough rich stock to moisten the truffles to half their height.

  5. Simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  6. Add champagne.

  7. Simmer for another 30 minutes.

Cool and serve

  1. Remove from heat, cover tightly, and let cool.

  2. Pack the saucepan in ice with a weight on the lid.

  3. Once cold, serve the truffles on a napkin with the strained liquor in a sauceboat.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Turnip + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,352 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Main ingredient that supplies the dish's central earthy flavour and aroma.
Champagne
Adds acidity and a bright aroma to the braising liquor.
Bacon fat or lard
Fat that carries aromatic flavour and gives the braised liquid richness.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet during simmering, building a savoury base for the liquor.
Carrot
Releases natural sugars during simmering, adding gentle sweetness and body to the liquor.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 30 minutes. A gentle simmer keeps the truffles tender and intact. Vigorous boiling can toughen them, break them apart and make the liquor cloudy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, champagne, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, champagne, carrot, turnip, onion, clove, thyme. 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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