Name: How to Prepare Perigueux-sauce
Ingredients: 1 small onion, minced; 1 shallot; 3 ounces raw ham, diced; 1 tablespoon butter; ½ cup Madeira wine; truffle trimmings; 1½ cups brown sauce; 4-5 tablespoons raw truffles, diced or chopped

Why it works: Onion and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,431 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

How to Prepare Perigueux-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

Combine the minced onion, shallot, diced ham, and butter in a stewpan.
Fry lightly until fragrant.
Moisten with Madeira wine and add truffle trimmings.
Reduce the liquid by half, then strain through a sieve.

Finish the sauce

Mix in the brown sauce and bring to a boil.
Add the raw truffles and cook for 3 minutes before serving.

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.

Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,209 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together516 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Madeira wine + truffletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together195 recipes
Shallot + saucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,303 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sauce: Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth texture.
Madeira wine: Adds sweetness and depth as its liquid reduces into the sauce.
Raw ham: Releases fat and savory flavor into the butter as it fries.
Raw truffles: Contribute the characteristic earthy aroma that defines the sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the Madeira and straining. Reducing concentrates the wine's sugars and flavor compounds while evaporating excess liquid. Straining removes solids so the sauce turns smooth and glossy rather than gritty.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, ham, butter, madeira wine, truffle, sauce):

Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Asparagusfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, ham, butter, madeira wine, truffle, sauce. 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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How to Prepare Perigueux-sauce