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Creamed Sweet Breads

A creamy sauce served over soaked sweet breads, flavored with onion, mace, parsley, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweet breads

  1. Soak sweet breads in cold water, changing the water until clear.

  2. Place sweet breads in a saucepan with onion, mace, parsley, and salt.

  3. Cover with boiling water and cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Transfer sweet breads to cold water for 30 minutes, then dry them on a towel.

  5. Remove all fat and sinews from sweet breads.

  6. Cut sweet breads into dice with a silver fork.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan and add flour to make a roux.

  2. Add salt and pepper to the mixture and mix over heat.

  3. Stir in white stock and cook until smooth and thick.

  4. Add cream and cook until thick and smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Fold in sweet breads.

  2. Cover the mixture and place over hot water for 10 minutes.

  3. Serve in ramekins or patty cases.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  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

Sweet breads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor while the flour is cooked into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing melted butter and swelling when heated with liquid.
White stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it savory depth as it thickens.
Rich cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until smooth and thick. Flour must be cooked in the melted butter and stirred steadily as the stock goes in, or lumps form. Cooking out the raw flour taste and letting starch swell gives a smooth, thick sauce that holds the sweet breads.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, onion, mace, parsley, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, onion, mace, parsley, 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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