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Tomato Sweetbreads

Tomato sweetbreads are tomatoes filled with cold creamed sweetbreads, topped with egg yolk, parsley, and served on lettuce with apple jelly and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,483 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Tomato Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scoop the centers out of the tomatoes and set them on ice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, fill the tomatoes with the cold creamed sweetbreads.

  2. Press the hard boiled egg yolks through a potato ricer and sprinkle over the top of the filled tomatoes.

  3. Garnish with chopped parsley.

  4. Place the tomatoes on lettuce hearts and surround with egg whites.

  5. Add a cone of apple jelly in the center of the ring and serve with mayonnaise.

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 + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + lettucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,655 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

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

  5. Lettuce + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together515 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Hollowed to hold the filling, and their moisture and acidity form the base of the dish.
Creamed sweetbreads
Provide the rich, creamy filling that sits inside the tomato shells.
Hard boiled eggs
Yolks are pressed into a fine crumb for texture and richness; whites are used as a ring around the dish.
Apple jelly
Adds sweetness that contrasts with the tart tomato and savory filling.

The step that matters

Fill the tomatoes just before serving. Tomatoes release water as they sit, which softens the shells and thins the creamed filling. Keeping them cold on ice and filling them at the last moment helps the shells stay firm and the filling stay thick.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, egg, parsley, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, egg, parsley, lettuce. 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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