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Stewed Sweetbreads

A stew of diced sweetbreads simmered in a mushroom and milk sauce seasoned with parsley, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Parboil and blanch the sweetbreads, then let them cool.

  2. Cut the sweetbreads into small, uniform dice.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, make a white roux with butter and flour.

  2. Stir in hot milk and continue stirring until it bubbles.

Combine and serve

  1. Add chopped mushrooms, sweetbread dice, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  2. Set the saucepan in boiling water for five minutes before serving.

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

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 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, delicate meat that forms the body of the stew.
Butter
Fat in the roux that carries flavor and helps the flour blend smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce as the roux cooks.
Hot milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savoury flavour and a soft, moist texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Stirring the milk into the roux. Adding hot milk to a roux while stirring constantly keeps the starch dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps. Continuing to stir until it bubbles lets the starch fully swell and thicken.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, mushroom, 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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