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Sweetbread Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with sweetbreads, butter, eggs, bread crumbs, cream, and seasonings, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

Sweetbread Pudding

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

  1. Blanch and prepare the sweetbreads as usual.

  2. Melt part of the butter in a pan and brown it slightly.

Make the mixture

  1. Moisten the bread crumbs with the cream and add the egg yolks one by one.

  2. Stir in the remaining butter, salt, pepper, parsley, and sweetbreads cut into squares.

  3. Butter a fireproof mold and pour the mixture into it.

  4. Beat the egg whites to a dry froth and fold them into the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Set the mold in a pan of boiling water and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Serve with mushroom or other fine sauce.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks bind the mixture and whites, whipped to a froth, lighten it as it sets.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and browning part of it deepens the taste.
Stale white bread crumbs
Absorb the cream and give the pudding body and structure.
Cream
Moistens the bread crumbs and keeps the custard tender and moist.
Sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty texture and flavour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites beaten to a dry froth trap air that lifts the mixture. Overmixing when folding knocks that air out, leaving a denser pudding.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, bread, pepper, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, pepper, cream. 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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