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Creamed Sweet-breads

A dish of tender sweetbreads simmered in a butter and cream sauce with mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Creamed Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold water for 1 hour, then remove skin and blood.

  2. In a saucepan, cover sweetbreads with cold water, add salt, peppercorns, onion, cloves, bay leaf, vinegar, and parsley.

  3. Bring to a boil, then simmer sweetbreads until tender.

  4. Drain and chill sweetbreads in cold water, then cut into small squares.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Halve larger mushrooms from the can.

  2. Make a cream sauce with butter, cream or milk, and mushroom liquor; season with salt, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Add mushrooms and sweetbreads to the sauce 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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a soft texture that contrasts with the tender sweetbreads.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sweetbreads until tender. Gentle simmering, not a hard boil, cooks the sweetbreads evenly and keeps them tender. Boiling hard toughens the proteins and makes the meat firm and rubbery.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, vinegar, parsley, butter, cream, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, vinegar, parsley, butter, cream, mushroom, pepper. 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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