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Sweetbread Pie

A pie filled with sweetbreads, oysters, lemon rind, egg yolks, anchovy essence, pepper, gravy, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sweetbread Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads.

  2. Season the sweetbreads with pepper.

  3. Sauté the sweetbreads in butter for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the oysters, lemon rind, yolks dipped in anchovy essence, and more pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture in a pie dish lined with crust.

  2. Pour in a little gravy and Madeira wine.

  3. Cover the pie with a top crust.

  4. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the body of the filling.
Butter
Sautés the sweetbreads, adding richness and browning their surface.
Bearded oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that contrasts with the rich meat.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Thicken the filling slightly and add a creamy, rich texture.
Madeira wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy in the pie.

The step that matters

Sautéing the sweetbreads in butter. Cooking over steady heat until the surface browns builds flavour, while overcooking leaves the sweetbreads dry and firm. Blanching first firms the meat so it holds its shape during sautéing.

“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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