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Coquilles of Sweet Breads and Brains

A dish of boiled sweetbreads and brains served in shells with a cream and sherry sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Coquilles of Sweet Breads and Brains

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the brains and sweetbreads with onion, red pepper, salt, and lemon juice until cooked.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, make a sauce by combining cream, chicken stock, flour, butter, and parsley.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked brains, sweetbreads, and sherry to the sauce.

  2. Serve the mixture in shells.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

Veal brains
Provide the tender, delicate body of the filling.
Sweetbreads
Provide a soft, creamy texture that makes up the bulk of the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and body, helping the sauce coat the filling smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it holds together around the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries flavor.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cooked brains and sweetbreads to the sauce. Sauce thickened with flour can become lumpy or thin if the flour is not cooked out and the liquid is not kept at a steady simmer. Adding sherry and the cooked meats to a sauce that is still too thin or too hot can break it or dilute its body.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, butter, sherry, flour, cream, pepper, chicken):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, butter, sherry, flour, cream, pepper, chicken. 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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