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Sweet-breads with Tomatoes

Sweetbreads cooked in a tomato sauce with onions, butter, flour, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweet-breads with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Slice and stew the tomatoes and onion in a saucepan until they break down.

  2. Strain the mixture through a sieve back into the saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the sweetbreads and stir in the butter mixed with flour, salt, and pepper or cayenne.

  2. Cook slowly for about 30 minutes.

  3. Just before serving, stir in the beaten yolks of the eggs.

  4. Transfer the sweetbreads to a deep dish and pour the tomato sauce over them.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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
Main protein; they become tender and mild as they cook slowly in the sauce.
Ripe tomatoes
Form the sauce base, providing acidity, body and bright flavor once stewed and strained.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks, giving it body.
Egg yolks
Stirred in at the end to enrich and slightly thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks just before serving. Egg yolks thicken when heated, and if they sit in or are heated too long in the hot sauce they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding them last, off the heat or at low heat, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (tomato, butter, flour, pepper, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, butter, flour, pepper, egg. 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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