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Sweetbreads a LA Creme

A creamy mushroom sauce with sweetbreads served in silver shells or paper cases.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sweetbreads a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads as directed.

  2. Remove all fine membranes from the sweetbreads.

  3. Chop the sweetbreads into small pieces.

  4. Chop the mushrooms finely.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour to the butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the cream, stirring constantly until it boils.

  4. Add the chopped mushrooms and sweetbreads, and stir over steam for 5 minutes.

  5. Season with salt and white pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve in silver shells or small paper 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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour and carries the flour for the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Makes the sauce rich and silky and gives it its creamy body.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, moist texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Gradually add the cream, stirring constantly until it boils. Adding cream all at once to a flour and butter roux can leave lumps. Gradual addition with constant stirring lets the starch disperse evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly as it comes to a boil.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, flour, butter, 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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