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Baked Sweet Breads and Peas

A baked dish of sweetbreads with peas, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Baked Sweet Breads and Peas

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Trim the fat from the sweetbreads and parboil for 15 minutes.

  2. Lard each sweetbread with five lardoons.

  3. Place them in a small baking pan and season with salt, pepper, and flour.

Bake

  1. Cover the bottom of the pan with water and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes, basting every 10 minutes.

Make the pea sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter, add the flour, and mix until smooth.

  2. Stir in the milk and cook until it boils.

  3. Add the drained peas and stir until heated through.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and rich when parboiled and baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in melted butter and milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, which thickens as it heats and boils.
Larding pork
Adds fat and savory flavor inside the sweetbreads as they bake.

The step that matters

Basting during the bake. Basting every 10 minutes keeps the surface moist so the sweetbreads stay tender rather than drying out over the 45-minute bake at 350°F.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, pork, flour, pepper. 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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