Skip to main content
Main

Truffle Sauce

A sauce made by stewing truffles with gravy, wine, onion, herbs, and bacon fat, then thickening and serving with sliced truffles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Truffle Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Brush and wash the truffles carefully.

  2. Place the truffles in a stewpan with gravy, white wine, onion, parsley, thyme, and bacon fat.

  3. Stew gently until the truffles are tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the truffles from the stewpan.

  2. Strain and skim the gravy.

  3. Thicken the gravy with a roux or a mixture of flour and butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Peel the truffles.

  2. Slice the truffles thickly.

  3. Warm the slices in the sauce.

  4. Serve.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. White wine + thymetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,503 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Truffles
Provide the main flavor and aroma, and become tender as they stew in the liquid.
Good gravy
Forms the savory liquid base of the sauce that the truffles cook in.
White wine
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich gravy.
Bacon fat
Adds fat and savory richness to the sauce.
Flour and butter
Thicken the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce through a roux.

The step that matters

Stew gently until the truffles are tender. High heat or a hard boil can toughen the truffles and make the sauce cloudy or greasy. A gentle simmer lets them soften evenly while their aroma stays in the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, white wine, parsley, thyme, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, white wine, parsley, thyme, flour, 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.

More truffle sauce recipes

Italian 6 See all 31 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes