Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Sweetbreads

Stewed sweetbreads simmered in white stock with rice flour thickened sauce, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the sweetbread

  1. Cut the prepared sweetbread into pieces.

  2. Place the sweetbread in a lined saucepan with the white stock.

  3. Cover and simmer until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the sweetbread and keep warm on toast.

  2. Mix the rice flour with a little water.

  3. Add the mixture to the stock in the saucepan.

  4. Stir over heat until boiling.

  5. Boil for five minutes.

  6. Add the cream and season to taste.

  7. Pour the sauce over the sweetbreads and serve.

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
Cooks the sweetbread gently and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Rice flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it heats and boils.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, creamier texture to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened sauce. Rice flour must be stirred while heating and brought to a boil so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. Undercooked starch leaves the sauce thin and floury tasting.

“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.

You might also like

Rice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipesSteamed RiceSteamed Rice48 recipesRice Griddle CakesRice Griddle Cakes28 recipesRice and Cheese CasseroleRice and Cheese Casserole23 recipes