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Sweetbreads a LA Bechamel

A creamy sauce of béchamel with sweetbreads and mushrooms, finished with egg yolks and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,176 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Sweetbreads a LA Bechamel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash sweetbreads.

  2. Parboil sweetbreads.

  3. Remove fibrous skin and fat from sweetbreads.

  4. Cut sweetbreads into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Stir in stock and cream, cook while stirring until it boils.

  4. Add chopped mushrooms and sweetbreads to the saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, stir in beaten egg yolks, salt, pepper, and sherry if using.

  2. Serve in a heated dish or individual paper 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. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

Flour and butter 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
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, stable sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in at the end.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour as the base for the roux.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolks at the end. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, and if the sauce is too hot or boils after they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding them off the heat, just before serving, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, butter, mushroom, egg, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, butter, mushroom, egg, sherry. 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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