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Truffle Sauce

A sauce made with sliced truffles, butter, consommé, béchamel or espagnole, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,209 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Truffle Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Clean and slice the truffles thinly.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, gently stew the truffles with the butter.

  2. Add the consommé and simmer until nearly dry.

  3. Stir in the béchamel sauce and heat until hot.

  4. Squeeze in lemon juice to taste before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Truffle + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,490 recipes
  5. Truffle + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Butter and sauce 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

Truffles
Provide the main flavour and aroma that define the sauce.
Butter
Gently cooks the truffles and adds richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Consommé
Adds savoury liquid that carries flavour as it reduces nearly dry.
Béchamel sauce
Forms the creamy body of the sauce, giving it thickness and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Simmer the consommé until nearly dry. Reducing the consommé concentrates its savoury flavour and lets the truffle flavour intensify. If it is left too wet, the finished sauce will taste diluted and may be thin once the béchamel is added.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Red currantfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, butter, sauce. 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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