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Sweetbreads, Pie of

A savory pie made with sweetbreads, mushrooms, veal forcemeat balls, asparagus tops, hard‑boiled yolks, bacon, and pastry, baked in a moderate oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 400 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, Pie of

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. Soak, blanch, and cool the sweetbreads.

  2. Cut each sweetbread into three pieces.

  3. Simmer the sweetbreads and mushrooms in white stock for 15 minutes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay the sweetbreads in a dish, adding the mushrooms, veal forcemeat balls, asparagus tops, and hard-boiled yolks.

  2. Thicken the gravy with white thickening, adding pepper and salt to taste, and pour it over the meat.

  3. Top with slices of fat bacon, cover with pastry, and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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 + asparagustop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Asparagus + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,338 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the pie.
White thickening
Thickens the stock into a gravy that binds the filling and keeps it moist.
Veal forcemeat balls
Add a soft, rich meaty texture that contrasts with the sweetbreads.
Fat bacon
Melts during baking, adding fat and savoury flavour to the filling and top.
Good pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the crust.

The step that matters

Simmer the sweetbreads and mushrooms in white stock for 15 minutes. Sweetbreads are delicate and overcooking toughens their proteins, while the stock must stay at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil to keep the meat tender and the liquid clear.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, veal, egg, pepper. 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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