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Sweetbread Pates

A savory pate made from sweetbreads, canned mushrooms, almonds, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Sweetbread Pates

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads.

  2. Blanch the sweetbreads.

  3. Parboil the sweetbreads.

  4. Cut the sweetbreads into dice.

Prepare the filling

  1. Dice the canned mushrooms.

  2. Mix the diced sweetbreads with an equal quantity of diced canned mushrooms.

  3. Blanch the almonds.

  4. Shred the blanched almonds into tiny bits.

  5. In a saucepan, heat the drawn butter.

  6. Season the butter well.

  7. Stir in the sweetbreads and almonds.

  8. Place the mixture over a double boiler to heat.

Bake and fill

  1. Heat the pate shells in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Fill the shells with the hot mixture.

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. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, meaty body of the pâté filling.
Canned mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the diced filling.
Almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor through the filling.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, binding the filling together.

The step that matters

Place the mixture over a double boiler to heat. Gentle, indirect heat warms the filling without scorching the butter or toughening the sweetbread proteins, which can happen with direct high heat.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Lima beansfits about as well
  2. Peasfits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter. 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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