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Sauce

An English Poivrade Sauce

A sauce made from finely minced onions and truffles, cooked in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

An English Poivrade Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the onions finely.

  2. Drain the opened truffles from their liquid.

Preserve the truffles

  1. Heat the truffles in clarified butter for 1-2 minutes.

  2. Transfer the truffles to clean jars and cover them completely with the butter, ensuring no liquid remains.

  3. Store the jars in a cool place.

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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Onion + truffletop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the main aroma and flavor of the dish.
Clarified butter
Coats the truffles and seals them from air, carrying their aroma.
Mild onions
Add a mild savory base that supports the truffle flavor.

The step that matters

Cover the truffles completely with butter. Any liquid left among the truffles or exposed surfaces can spoil the preserve. Fully covering them with clarified butter excludes air and moisture, which slows microbial growth and keeps the truffles stable in storage.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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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