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Tomato Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads simmered in tomato sauce with butter and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tomato Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tomato base

  1. Stew the tomatoes in their own juice over medium heat until they break down.

  2. Strain the tomato mixture through a sieve.

Cook the sweetbreads

  1. In a stew pan, combine the sweetbreads, strained tomato juice, salt, and cayenne.

  2. Add the butter rolled in flour.

  3. Cook over medium heat until the sweetbreads are done.

  4. A few minutes before serving, stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Serve

  1. Serve the sweetbreads in a deep dish with the tomato sauce poured over them.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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 as they cook gently in the sauce.
Ripe tomatoes
Provide the bulk of the sauce, with moisture and acidity that carry the flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and the flour coating helps thicken the sauce.
Egg yolks
Stirred in at the end to enrich and slightly thicken the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the sauce boils. Adding them just before serving, off the boil, keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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