Skip to main content
Main

Truffles a l’iTALIENNE

Sautéed truffles in butter with parsley, shallot, Spanish sauce, lemon, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Truffles a l’iTALIENNE

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and clean the truffles, then slice them thinly, about the size of a penny.

  2. In a small frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

Sauté and finish

  1. Add the sliced truffles, minced parsley, shallot, salt, and pepper, then stir the mixture to ensure even frying for about 10 minutes.

  2. Drain off some of the butter, then add the Spanish sauce, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Stir well and serve hot.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Are the main flavour ingredient, giving the dish its earthy, aromatic character.
Fresh butter
Carries the truffle aroma and fries the slices, adding richness and browning.
Spanish sauce
Adds body and a savoury, rounded base to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and earthy truffle flavour.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Drain off some of the butter. Removing excess fat before adding the sauce keeps the finished dish from becoming greasy and lets the lemon and sauce flavours come through clearly.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes