Skip to main content

Sweetbread Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Artichoke and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Sweetbread Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Lay puff pastry at the bottom of a deep dish.

  2. Put the force-meat around the sides of the dish.

  3. Cut sweetbreads and lay them in first.

  4. Add artichoke bottoms, cocks' combs, truffles, morels, asparagus tops, and fresh mushrooms.

  5. Add hard-boiled egg yolks and force-meat balls.

  6. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  7. Almost fill the pie with water, cover it, and bake for 2 hours.

  8. When done, pour in rich veal gravy and thicken with cream and flour.

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. Artichoke + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

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

  3. Asparagus + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

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

  4. Artichoke + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

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

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Asparagusthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, truffle, mushroom, egg, meat, pepper, veal. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More sweetbread pie recipes

You might also like