Skip to main content
Bread

Mock Sweet Breads

A savory bread-like dish made with brains, bacon, eggs, mushrooms, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mock Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains

  1. Clean the brains by removing the outside membrane.

  2. Cook the brains in boiling water for about 20 minutes.

Make the cream sauce

  1. To make the sauce, melt the butter in a small pan over low heat.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and blend to a paste.

  3. Stir in the scalded milk and beat until the sauce is creamy.

Combine and finish

  1. Crisp the bacon and break it into small pieces.

  2. Chop the hard-boiled eggs and add them with the bacon.

  3. Mix in the mushrooms and stir everything together in a cream sauce.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  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

Brains
Provide the main meaty texture that the dish is built around.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor as the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it body and richness.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat and crisp texture to the mixture.
Eggs
Add body and a soft, chopped texture that blends into the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the roux. If the milk is added too fast or cold, the flour-butter paste can lump instead of blending smoothly. Adding it gradually while beating keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce turns creamy and thick.

“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.

You might also like

CornbreadCornbread345 recipesBread PuddingBread Pudding336 recipesMilk Bread RollsMilk Bread Rolls242 recipesPotato BreadPotato Bread124 recipes