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Stewed Sweet Breads

Stewed sweetbreads served with a sauce of drawn butter, cream, tomato ketchup, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Stewed Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Stew the sweetbreads whole until perfectly tender but not broken.

  2. Serve with a sauce made of drawn butter, cream, tomato ketchup, pepper, and salt poured over them.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  3. Cream + ketchuptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 main component of the dish.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty mouthfeel to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the sauce's texture.
Tomato ketchup
Contributes sweetness and acidity to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stew the sweetbreads whole until perfectly tender but not broken.. Gentle, moist heat tenderises the connective tissue slowly. Heating too hard or too long can toughen the meat or cause the delicate sweetbreads to break apart.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, ketchup, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, ketchup, 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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