Name: Scalloped Sweetbreads
Ingredients: cooked sweetbread; thick Bechamel sauce; 2 eggs; breadcrumbs; hot fat for frying; potatoes; peas; milk or cream

Why it works: Potato and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,016 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Scalloped Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Press cooked sweetbread and cut it into rounds.
Coat each round with thick Bechamel sauce.
Coat twice with beaten eggs and breadcrumbs.
Fry in hot fat until golden brown.
Serve on a hot potato border.
Force a rosette of potato on each piece of sweetbread.
Place a pea on each rosette.
Thin down the sauce with milk or cream and serve around the dish.
Place more peas at each end of the serving dish.

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.

Potato + peastop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,016 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Peas + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,309 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + peastop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,065 recipes

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