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Truffles, for Cold Garnitures

Truffles served cold, glazed with aspic or wine sauce, or made into a paste with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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, for Cold Garnitures

Ingredients

Directions

Cook and glaze

  1. Cook the whole or sliced truffles in Champagne or Madeira wine until tender.

  2. Let the truffles cool, then glaze them with aspic jelly or mask with cold Champagne sauce.

  3. Dress the truffles in bunches with aspic jelly or in fancy-shaped crusts.

Make the puree and sauce

  1. For the puree, pound ½ pound of truffles and 6 ounces of butter into a fine paste. Rub the paste through a fine sieve.

  2. Prepare 1 pint of Madeira wine sauce reduced with the truffle juice.

  3. When ready to serve, stir the truffle paste into the sauce off the heat until melted.

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 + madeira winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes
  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 form the garnish itself.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty texture to the truffle paste.
Madeira wine sauce
Carries the truffle flavor and gives the dish a rich, moist base.

The step that matters

Stir the truffle paste into the sauce off the heat until melted. Butter emulsifies smoothly into a sauce when it is melted gently off direct heat. Over high heat the butter can separate and turn the sauce greasy.

“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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