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Dessert

Creamed Sweet Breads

A creamy sauce with sweet breads, onions, mace, parsley, and stock, simmered and served in ramekins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweet breads

  1. Soak the sweet breads in cold water, changing the water until it is clear.

  2. When the breads are white, place them in a saucepan with onion, mace, parsley, and salt.

  3. Cover with boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Transfer the cooked breads to cold water for 30 minutes.

  5. Dry the breads on a towel and remove all fat and sinews.

  6. Dice the breads with a silver fork to prevent discoloration.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour, salt, and white pepper to the melted butter and mix over heat.

  3. Stir in the white stock and cook until smooth and thick.

  4. Add the cream and cook until thick and smooth.

Combine and serve

  1. Gently fold in the sweet breads, cover, and place over hot water for 10 minutes.

  2. Serve in ramekins or patty cases.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet breads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Enriches the base of the sauce and carries the flour's thickening.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
White stock or broth
Supplies liquid that, thickened with flour, forms the body of the sauce.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce smooth before adding the cream. Flour must be cooked into the butter and then whisked with stock until smooth and thick; if lumps form or the roux is undercooked, the sauce stays pasty and raw-tasting. Cooking out the flour taste matters before the cream goes in.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, mace, parsley, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, mace, parsley, butter, flour, cream. 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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