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Sweetbreads and Asparagus

A dish of sweetbreads and boiled asparagus cooked in a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Asparagus and corn share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 84 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweetbreads and Asparagus

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Cream together the yolks of the eggs, butter, and corn starch.

  2. Heat the mixture and add the cream and asparagus water.

Finish and serve

  1. Once smooth, add the parboiled sweetbreads, broken into pieces.

  2. Stew for 6 to 8 minutes.

  3. Serve in pattie shells.

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. Asparagus + corntop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together84 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Coffee + corntop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

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

  5. Asparagus + coffeetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27 recipes

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

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 body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the sauce so it becomes smooth and coats the sweetbreads.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, adding body and a creamy texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sauce's flavor and texture.

The step that matters

Adding the sweetbreads to the sauce. Once the sauce is smooth, the sweetbreads should be added and stewed gently. Keeping the heat low prevents the egg yolks from curdling and the starch-thickened sauce from becoming grainy or lumpy.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, egg, coffee, corn):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusthe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, egg, coffee, corn. 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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