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Truffles a Litalienne

Sautéed truffles with butter, parsley, shallot, Spanish sauce, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Truffles a Litalienne

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, wipe, and peel the truffles, then slice them thinly, about the size of a penny.

  2. In a small frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat.

Sauté and finish

  1. Add the sliced truffles, minced parsley, shallot, salt, and pepper.

  2. Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring to ensure even frying.

  3. Drain off some of the butter, then add fresh butter, Spanish sauce, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Stir well and serve hot.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Truffles
Main flavour; thin slices cook evenly and release their aroma into the butter.
Butter
Fat that carries the truffle aroma and gives the sauté its rich texture.
Spanish sauce
Adds body and savoury depth to the butter for a fuller sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and truffle flavour.

The step that matters

Cook for about 10 minutes, stirring to ensure even frying.. Stirring keeps the truffle slices from scorching on the pan while they soften and release their aroma. Too much heat or neglect can burn the butter and milk solids, giving a bitter taste that masks the truffle.

“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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