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Sweetbreads with Tomatoes

Sweetbreads cooked in a tomato sauce with butter, flour, salt, cayenne, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper 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 ↓

Sweetbreads with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice the tomatoes and stew them until they break.

  2. Strain the tomatoes through a sieve into a saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the sweetbreads to the saucepan.

  2. Stir in the butter mixed with flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Just before serving, add the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Serve in a deep dish with the tomato sauce poured over the sweetbreads.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Ripe tomatoes
Form the main sauce base, providing moisture, acidity and body once stewed and strained.
Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that is simmered in the tomato sauce.
Butter mixed with flour
Thickens the sauce and adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding richness and smoothness when added at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so adding them just before serving and not letting the sauce boil keeps them smooth rather than scrambled or curdled.

Swap the tomato

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

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

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