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Sauce

Truffle Sauce

A sauce made with truffles, clear soup, butter, flour, sherry wine, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Truffle Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Simmer the truffles

  1. Chop the truffles and place them with their liquid into a saucepan with the clear soup.

  2. Boil steadily for 30 minutes.

Thicken and season

  1. Rub the white and browned flour with the butter together.

  2. Stir in the truffles and simmer until thick.

  3. Add the sherry wine, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Truffles
Provide the main earthy aroma and flavour of the sauce.
Clear soup
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and becomes the body of the sauce.
White flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Browned flour
Adds colour and a toasted, nutty note to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Sherry wine
Adds acidity and a fragrant, slightly sweet aroma.

The step that matters

Simmer until thick. The flour thickens as its starch swells in hot liquid, and it needs enough simmering to cook out its raw taste. Keep the heat gentle so the sauce does not scorch or form lumps.

“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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