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Sweetbreads, Minced, in Paper Cases

A savory dish of minced sweetbreads, mushrooms, bacon, and herbs baked in paper cases with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, Minced, in Paper Cases

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a pan, stew the chopped mushrooms in butter.

  2. Add the bacon, sweetbreads, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  3. If desired, add shallots and simmer gently until mushrooms are cooked, about 15 minutes.

  4. Drain off excess fat and remove parsley.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the mixture in oiled small paper cases.

  2. Sprinkle with savory herbs and cover with bread-crumbs.

  3. Heat the cases in the oven at 400°F (200°C) for a moment.

Serve

  1. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice into each case and add a spoonful of rich gravy.

  2. Serve very hot on a napkin.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 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, rich meaty body that forms the main filling.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavour that keeps the filling juicy.
Bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the filling in the oven.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky savour that carries flavour through the filling.
Rich gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the filling just before serving.

The step that matters

Drain off excess fat and remove parsley. Leftover fat from the butter and bacon would make the filling greasy and cause it to pool in the paper cases, while excess moisture softens the crumb topping.

“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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