Name: With Green Peas
Ingredients: 4 sweetbreads; ½ cup melted butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; glaze; green peas; fried bread (optional)

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

With Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Disgorge and blanch the sweetbreads thoroughly.
Cut them into large scallops.
In a frying pan, mark the scallops with melted butter and salt.
Fry them lightly over medium heat for 15 minutes, turning occasionally.
Drain the butter and add a little glaze to the pan.
Stir the sweetbreads in the glaze, then plate them with peas in the center.
For leftovers, cut sweetbreads into scallops, heat in glaze, and serve with peas.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Peas + breadtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together804 recipes

Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).
Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,887 recipes

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