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Sweet-breads for Timbals

A savory dish of sweetbreads and mushrooms simmered in a butter‑flour milk sauce with onion and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet-breads for Timbals

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads and mushrooms

  1. Boil the sweetbreads in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Transfer the sweetbreads to cold water to harden.

  3. Remove the skin from the sweetbreads.

  4. Cut the sweetbreads into 96 small dice.

  5. Dice the mushrooms.

Make the sauce and combine

  1. Infuse the milk with the onion and mace until flavored.

  2. Remove the onion and mace from the milk.

  3. Melt the butter in a pan.

  4. Add the flour to the melted butter.

  5. Stir in the milk.

  6. Bring the mixture to a boil for 1 minute.

  7. Add the sweetbreads and mushrooms to the mixture.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provide the tender, meaty body of the filling once diced and cooked.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the mixture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that binds the filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor when cooked with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter.

The step that matters

Bringing the mixture to a boil for 1 minute. Flour starch only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, so the sauce must be brought to a boil and held briefly. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce that will not hold the filling together.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, milk, butter, flour, onion):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, milk, butter, flour, onion. 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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