Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbreads and Cauliflowers

A stew of sweetbreads and cauliflower simmered with cayenne, nutmeg, butter, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sweetbreads and Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split open the sweetbreads and remove the gristle.

  2. Soak the sweetbreads in lukewarm water for a while.

  3. Boil the sweetbreads in a saucepan of boiling water for 10 minutes.

  4. Transfer the sweetbreads to a pan of cold water to firm them up.

  5. Wash, drain, and quarter the cauliflowers.

Stew

  1. Place the cauliflowers in a broad stew pan and add the sweetbreads on top.

  2. Season with cayenne and nutmeg, then add enough water to cover.

  3. Cover the pan and stew for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. Roll the butter in flour and add it along with the milk to the stew.

  2. Bring to a boil and serve hot in a deep dish.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

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

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 main body of the dish.
Cauliflowers
Add bulk and a mild, sweet vegetable flavour as they soften during stewing.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milky liquid into a smooth sauce when rolled in butter and stirred in.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce, adding body and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil after adding the butter-flour and milk. Flour needs to be heated to a boil to swell and thicken the liquid fully; stopping short leaves a thin, starchy-tasting sauce, while overheating milk can scorch it on the base of the pan.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

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

You might also like

Cauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipesCreamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipesEscalloped CauliflowerEscalloped Cauliflower9 recipes