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To Currie Sweet-breads

A dish of sweetbreads simmered in a veal gravy flavored with curry powder, vinegar, lemon, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Currie Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gravy

  1. Prepare veal gravy and keep it warm.

  2. Fry the onion until golden, then add it to the gravy.

  3. Stir in vinegar, lemon juice, curry powder, and salt to taste.

  4. Rub butter into enough flour to thicken the gravy properly.

Cook and serve

  1. Cut sweetbreads into 2-inch pieces and gently stew them in the gravy until cooked through.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

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
Provide the tender meat that is cooked gently in the curry gravy.
Veal gravy
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and body of the curry.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the sweetbreads rather than running thin.
Butter
Enriches the thickened gravy with fat and a smooth, rounded texture.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm spiced aroma that defines the dish.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and depth once fried golden.

The step that matters

Gently stew the sweetbreads. Sweetbreads turn firm and rubbery if boiled or stewed hard. A gentle simmer cooks the protein evenly while keeping it tender and moist.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, onion, vinegar, butter, flour. 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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