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Sauce

Truffle Sauce for Turkies, &C

A sauce made with green truffles, beef broth, ham, shallots, and wine for turkey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Truffle Sauce for Turkies, &C

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Clean the green truffles well with a hard brush and trim them into shapes.

  2. Pound the trimmings in a mortar and add them to the stuffing for the turkey cavity.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stewpan, combine the truffles and beef broth, and stew gently until the liquid is almost reduced.

  2. Add the well-seasoned cullis.

  3. In another stewpan, combine the ham, a little water, shallots, bay leaf, garlic, and anchovy; stew gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Add veal broth, ketchup, sweet oil, and wine; season to taste.

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. Shallot + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Shallot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Truffle + hamtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Green truffles
Provide the main aroma and flavour that give the sauce its character.
Beef broth
Forms the savoury liquid base that reduces to concentrate flavour.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty depth as it stews slowly with aromatics.
Veal broth
Adds body and savoury richness to the finished sauce.
Ketchup
Contributes sweetness and acidity that round out the savoury sauce.
Wine
Adds acidity and aromatic complexity that lift the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the truffle and beef broth. Stewing gently until the liquid is almost reduced concentrates the flavour. Boiling hard or stopping too early leaves the sauce either harsh or thin and weakly flavoured.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (truffle, beef, sauce, meat, ham, shallot, garlic):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, beef, sauce, meat, ham, shallot, garlic. 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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