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Sauce

How to Prepare Royal-sauce

A sauce made from truffles, champagne, parsley, white sauce, game or poultry extract, and Rhenish wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Champagne and wine work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 172 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

How to Prepare Royal-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the truffles

  1. Shape the truffles into an olive shape.

  2. Moisten the truffles with dry champagne and add parsley.

  3. Boil the truffles until the liquid reduces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a flat saucepan, combine white sauce and truffle trimmings, and reduce by one third.

  2. Gradually stir in concentrated game or poultry extract.

  3. Add Rhenish wine and the liquid from the cooked truffles, and let the sauce boil a few more times.

  4. Strain the sauce through a tammy into a stewpan, mix well, and add the cooked truffles.

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. Champagne + winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together172 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Truffle + champagnetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together120 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Parsley + winetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Truffle + winetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together344 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethylphenol (must).

  5. Champagne + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Provide the main earthy flavour and aroma that define the sauce.
White sauce
Forms the creamy base that gives the sauce its body.
Concentrated game or poultry extract
Adds deep savoury meatiness and richness to the sauce.
Dry champagne
Adds acidity and aroma while helping the truffles release their flavour.
Rhenish wine
Adds acidity and a fruity, aromatic note that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the white sauce and truffle trimmings by one third. Reduction concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce. Too little reduction leaves it thin and bland, while overcooking can scorch the base or make it too dense.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against truffle, champagne, sauce, wine. 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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