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Sweet-breads a LA Roumage

A savory dish of sweetbreads simmered in a broth with onions, spices, mushrooms, truffles, and port.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweet-breads a LA Roumage

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Fry the sweetbreads in butter until golden.

  2. In the same pan, add onion, cloves, mace, bay leaves, and peppercorns; cook until the onion is very brown.

  3. Add broth and boil until reduced by half; strain if desired.

  4. Stir in mushrooms and truffles, then thicken with flour.

  5. Color with kitchen bouquet, add mushroom ketchup and port.

Finish

  1. Add sweetbreads to the gravy and simmer for a few minutes.

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. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Clove + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 is the centerpiece of the dish.
Butter
Browns the sweetbreads and adds richness to the pan.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the gravy, which reduces to concentrate flavor.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the sweetbreads.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth to the finished gravy.
Truffles
Contribute an earthy, aromatic flavor to the gravy.

The step that matters

Browning the onion in the pan. Cooking the onion until very brown builds deep, roasted flavor through the Maillard reaction and caramelization. Pale onion yields a flat gravy, so the color must develop fully before the broth goes in.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, clove, mushroom, truffle, flour, ketchup):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, clove, mushroom, truffle, flour, ketchup. 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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