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Sweet Bread and Brain Pates

A savory pâté made from sweetbreads, brains, mushrooms, truffles, and a butter‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweet Bread and Brain Pates

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads and brains in salt water.

  2. Clean and boil them with lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Chop the sweetbreads, brains, and mushrooms finely.

Make the filling

  1. Make a sauce by boiling the milk or cream, butter, parsley, and flour.

  2. Stir in the chopped sweetbreads, brains, and truffle peelings.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the pâtés with the mixture and roast.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Become tender and creamy when cooked, giving the pâté its soft, rich body.
Brains
Add a smooth, delicate texture to the minced filling once cooked and finely chopped.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Milk or cream
Forms the sauce that keeps the minced meats moist and binds the filling together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sweetbreads and brains. Boil them gently rather than hard. High heat toughens the proteins in offal, leaving the minced filling rubbery instead of tender and creamy.

“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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