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To Stew Sweet Breads in Cream

A creamy sauce of butter, flour, milk, and cream served with boiled sweetbreads.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

To Stew Sweet Breads in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a thick saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smoothly blended.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk and cream, stirring until you have a smooth sauce.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the boiled sweetbreads and cook until heated through.

  2. Serve hot, optionally adding stewed and strained tomatoes to the 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + tomatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,226 recipes

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

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour at the start of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with the butter as a roux, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, making it smooth and pourable.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a silkier texture.
Sweetbreads
Provide the main meat and tender texture in the finished dish.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot milk and cream, stirring until smooth. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets the flour starch disperse evenly. Adding it all at once can cause lumps, because starch clumps when it hits hot liquid before it can be wetted.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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