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Curried Sweetbreads

A dish of sweetbreads cooked in butter, onion, stock, flour, and curry powder, served over rice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the curry

  1. Fry the sweetbreads in butter until golden.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until soft.

  3. Pour in the stock and bring to a simmer.

  4. Stir in the flour, butter, and curry powder until well combined.

Serve

  1. Serve the sweetbreads over cooked rice.

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. Onion + ricetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  5. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 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

Sweetbreads
The main protein, browned in butter to develop a golden crust.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the sweetbreads brown when fried.
Onion
Softens and turns mildly sweet, forming the flavour base of the sauce.
Stock
Provides the liquid that forms the body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced aroma and colour that define the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour, butter, and curry powder until well combined. Flour must be fully mixed into the hot liquid so its starch disperses evenly. Unmixed flour forms lumps and leaves the sauce unevenly thickened and floury-tasting.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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