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Stewed Sweetbreads

Stewed sweetbreads simmered with stock, thickened with rice flour and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the sweetbread by soaking it in water and removing any membranes.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Stew and thicken

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sweetbread and white stock, and bring to a simmer.

  2. Mix the rice flour with a little water to make a paste, then stir it into the saucepan.

  3. Add the cream and cook for a few more minutes until thickened.

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 + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Rice + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 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. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Rice + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Provides the tender, delicate meat that is the main component of the dish.
White stock
Supplies the liquid that gently cooks the sweetbread and forms the base of the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a silky sauce when mixed into a paste first.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce thicken and turn smooth.

The step that matters

Stirring the rice flour paste into the saucepan. Rice flour clumps if added dry or unmixed. Mixing it into a smooth paste with water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the liquid without lumps.

“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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