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Sweetbreads with Mushrooms

A stew of sweetbreads and mushrooms cooked with cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sweetbreads with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads until partially cooked.

  2. Cut the sweetbreads into half-inch squares.

Stew

  1. Stew the sweetbreads until tender.

  2. Slice the mushrooms and stew them in their liquid for one hour.

  3. Add the mushrooms to the sweetbreads along with the cream and butter.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the stew, becoming tender and meaty during slow stewing.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture, releasing their liquid into the stew as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the stew.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, savory flavor.

The step that matters

Parboil the sweetbreads until partially cooked. Parboiling firms the outer tissue and removes some surface impurities, so the pieces hold their shape when cut and stewed. Overcooking at this point leaves them rubbery once they finish in the stew.

“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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