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Sweet Breads with Tomatoes

Sweetbreads cooked in a flour and butter gravy, then served with stewed tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweet Breads with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Place sweetbreads in scalding water for 5 minutes.

  2. Transfer sweetbreads to cold water.

  3. Skin the sweetbreads without breaking them.

Cook and make the gravy

  1. Put sweetbreads in a stew pan with water.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cook on low heat.

  4. Mix flour with butter.

  5. Stir the flour and butter into the gravy.

  6. After 30 minutes, remove sweetbreads from gravy.

  7. Pour gravy into stewed tomatoes.

  8. Boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour over sweetbreads.

  2. 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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meat, whose tender texture develops with gentle cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour helps thicken the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the sweetbreads.
Stewed tomatoes
Supply moisture, acidity and flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Skinning the sweetbreads without breaking them. Sweetbreads are delicate and soft; tearing them while skinning exposes the tender interior and makes them fall apart during the slow simmer, so handle them gently after the scalding and cold-water steps firm them up.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter. 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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