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Truffle Sauce

A sauce made with sliced truffles, butter, gravy, salt, 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

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sliced truffles and butter.

  2. Simmer until the truffles are tender.

  3. Add enough gravy to achieve your desired thickness.

  4. Season with salt and squeeze in the lemon juice.

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

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

  3. Truffle + lemontop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together860 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the main earthy aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel as it melts with the truffles.
Gravy
Supplies the savoury body and sets the thickness of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Simmer until the truffles are tender. Truffle aroma is volatile and fades with prolonged high heat, so a gentle simmer softens the truffles while keeping their fragrance. Too much heat can also make the butter separate and turn greasy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Red currantfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Grapefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, 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.

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