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Stewed Sweet-breads

Stewed sweetbread is a creamy stew of sweetbreads simmered with cream, flour, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads and let them cool.

  2. Cut the sweetbreads into fine pieces.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream and flour to make a dressing.

  2. Season the dressing with butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Boil the mixture slowly for ten minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the sweetbreads and cook for five more minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 dish.
Cream
Supplies moisture and richness, forming the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth dressing that coats the sweetbreads.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavour of the dressing.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture slowly for ten minutes. Flour must cook long enough to lose its raw taste and reach full thickening. Boiling gently keeps the cream from scorching or breaking while the starch swells.

“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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