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Truffles with Champagne

A stew of truffles cooked with bacon, ham, stock, and champagne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Truffle and champagne work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 120 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Truffles with Champagne

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Place the truffles in a stewpan on top of the rashers of bacon.

  2. Add the bay leaf, seasoned bouquet, grated bacon, ham slices, and stock.

  3. Pour in the champagne and cover with buttered paper.

  4. Cover the stewpan with a lid and place it in hot ashes with fire on top.

  5. Let it stew for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Drain the truffles on a clean cloth and serve on a folded napkin.

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 + champagnetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Truffle + hamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Champagne + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together209 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

Truffles
Are the main ingredient, providing the dish's distinctive earthy aroma as they gently stew.
Champagne
Adds acidity and aromatic flavour to the braising liquid, helping to tenderise the stew.
Bacon
Releases fat and savoury flavour into the stew, enriching the braising liquid.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour to the braising liquid.
Stock
Provides moisture and savoury depth for the stew to simmer in.

The step that matters

Cover the stewpan and stew gently in hot ashes. A tightly sealed lid with buttered paper traps steam so the truffles braise in their own aroma. Too much direct heat or an unsealed pan lets the liquid reduce and the delicate aroma escape.

“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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