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Black Truffles, ‘au Gratin’

A dish of black truffles filled with a liver and truffle mixture, topped with breadcrumbs and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Black Truffles, ‘au Gratin’

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the truffles in half and scoop out the flesh with a vegetable spoon.

  2. Dice the truffle flesh and mix it with the same volume of cooked fat-liver.

  3. Season the mixture and thicken it with a little reduced brown sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the truffle halves with the mixture and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Baste the truffles with a little butter.

  3. Place the truffles in a flat stewpan with a little white wine.

  4. Bring the wine to a boil.

  5. Place the stewpan in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 10 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.

  1. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Truffle + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,209 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Truffle + livertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together395 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raw truffles
Provide the main flavour and aroma, and the hollow shells that hold the filling.
Cooked fat-liver
Adds richness and moisture to the filling, carrying the truffle flavour.
Reduced brown sauce
Thickens the filling so it holds its shape in the truffle halves.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on top that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the crumbs brown and enriches the surface.

The step that matters

Bring the wine to a boil. Boiling the wine before the stewpan goes into the oven drives off alcohol and begins the steam that gently cooks the truffles in a covered pan. Heat that is too low leaves the truffles under-warmed.

“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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