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Stewed Sweetbreads with Oysters

A stew of sweetbreads and oysters flavored with nutmeg, mace, butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Stewed Sweetbreads with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Cut open the sweetbreads and remove the gristle. Soak them in warm water until the blood is removed.

  2. Scald the sweetbreads in boiling water for 10 minutes to make them white and firm.

  3. Transfer them to cold water until completely cooled, then drain.

Stew

  1. In a stew-pan, combine the sweetbreads with the liquor from the oysters, nutmeg, and mace.

  2. Mix the butter with the flour until smooth and add to the pan.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for at least 30 minutes.

  4. Add the oysters and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  5. Stir in the cream just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish with a slice of buttered toast at the bottom.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Main protein; scalding firms them and turns them white, giving a tender, meaty texture.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and tender texture to the stew.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth body to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew's liquid so it becomes smooth and lightly bodied.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, silky mouthfeel to the finished stew.

The step that matters

Scald the sweetbreads and cool them fully. Boiling firms the sweetbread proteins and whitens them, while cooling in cold water stops the cooking so they stay tender rather than tough and rubbery. Soaking first removes blood that would otherwise darken and taint the dish.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream. 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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