Skip to main content
Main

Bechamel Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads cooked in a bechamel sauce with mushrooms and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,500 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bechamel Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash and parboil the sweetbreads, then cut them into small pieces with a silver knife.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the flour, cream, stock, and salt to make the sauce.

  2. Add the quartered mushrooms and cook until tender.

  3. Remove from heat and stir in the two egg yolks until well combined.

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. Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mushroomtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,987 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meat, which is parboiled and cut into small pieces.
Flour
Thickens the cream and stock into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Stirred in off the heat to enrich and thicken the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so adding them to a hot sauce can scramble them. Removing the pan from the heat first and stirring steadily lets them thicken the sauce gently and evenly.

“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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes