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Sweet-bread and Oyster Pie

A savory pie filled with sweetbreads and oysters, seasoned with pepper, sea salt, butter, and mashed egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Sweet-bread and Oyster Pie

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. Stew the sweetbreads until tender.

  2. Line a dish with pie crust.

  3. Cut the sweetbreads into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. In the dish, layer sweetbreads and oysters.

  2. Add pepper, coarse sea salt, butter, and mashed egg yolks.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  4. Cover with a top crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Oyster + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 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, rich meat that forms the body of the pie.
Oysters
Add briny flavor and moisture that keeps the filling juicy as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the filling taste smooth and savory.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the filling to thicken it slightly and add richness.

The step that matters

Stew the sweetbreads until tender. Sweetbreads must be fully tender before baking, because the oven only browns the crust and will not soften tough meat. Undercooked sweetbreads stay firm and chewy in the finished pie.

“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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