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Truffles, with Madeira Wine Sauce

Truffles served with a Madeira wine reduction and butter sauce.

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 ↓

Truffles, with Madeira Wine Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the juice of the truffles and Madeira wine.

  2. Cover and reduce the mixture to half its quantity over medium heat.

Finish and serve

  1. Add sliced truffles and butter to the sauce, tossing well to combine.

  2. Serve the truffles on toast or gratinated crusts.

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. Truffle + madeira winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes
  3. Madeira wine + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 of the dish, with their juice concentrating into the sauce.
Madeira wine
Reduces to a sweet, concentrated base that gives the sauce depth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, glossy texture when tossed in.

The step that matters

Reducing the Madeira and truffle juice. Reducing concentrates the liquid by evaporating water, intensifying flavor and thickening the sauce. Reducing too far or too fast can scorch the sugars in the wine and make the sauce bitter or overly thick, so the mixture should be watched closely over medium heat.

“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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