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Dessert

In Matelotte Sauce

Brains served in a matelotte sauce with truffles, mushrooms, crayfish, and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

In Matelotte Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the brains as directed in recipe No. 756 and drain on a napkin.

  2. Cut the drained brains into scallops and arrange them in a circular order in a croustade.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a matelotte sauce with white wine, a little cayenne, and lemon juice.

  2. Add small button onions simmered in butter, 3 oz. of scalloped truffles, a dozen small quenelles, and a few mushrooms to the sauce.

Assemble and serve

  1. Crown the top with 6 large crayfish and place a fried crouton shaped like a leaf between them.

  2. In the center, place a large truffle and 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

Brains
Provide the tender, creamy main protein that forms the body of the dish.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the matelotte sauce, balancing its richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and gives the onions a golden, savoury flavour when simmered.
Truffles
Contribute a strong, earthy aroma that perfumes the sauce and garnish.
6 large crayfish
Add sweet, delicate shellfish flavour and a firm texture contrast.

The step that matters

Drain the brains thoroughly before cutting. Excess moisture left on the brains dilutes the sauce and makes the delicate scallops fragile and prone to breaking when arranged.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (white wine, pepper, lemon, butter, truffle, mushroom, crayfish):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, pepper, lemon, butter, truffle, mushroom, crayfish. 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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