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Truffles, to Coolc

Truffles cooked in sherry or madeira, seasoned with salt and pepper, glazed, and finished with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Truffles, to Coolc

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the truffles

  1. Clean the truffles thoroughly.

  2. Place them in a pan and cover with sherry or madeira.

  3. Add salt and pepper, then cook gently until tender.

Finish the sauce

  1. Stir in the glaze and let it melt.

  2. Drain the truffles, keeping them hot.

  3. Add butter to the wine and boil.

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. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Truffle + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  4. Sherry + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh truffles
Provide the main earthy, aromatic flavour of the dish.
Sherry or madeira
Adds aromatic depth and acidity, and forms the cooking liquid that softens the truffles.
Butter
Adds richness and body, giving the wine a smooth, glossy finish.

The step that matters

Adding the butter to the boiling wine. Butter is an emulsion of fat and water. If the wine boils hard after the butter goes in, the emulsion can break and turn the sauce greasy and separated, so keep the heat controlled and the liquid moving.

“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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