Name: Creamed Sweetbreads
Ingredients: sweetbreads; coarse sea salt; water; butter; pepper; lemon juice; watercress; toast

Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Creamed Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Soak sweetbreads in salt and water overnight.
If young, boil in hot water (400°F/200°C) for 15 minutes.
Drain and remove the sinews.
Pick into pieces and stew in butter for 5 minutes, seasoning with pepper and salt.
Squeeze in lemon juice just before serving.
Garnish with watercress and serve on toast or as desired.

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.

Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together579 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together983 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

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