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Sweetbreads and Mushrooms En Casserole

A casserole of blanched sweetbreads with mixed vegetables, mushrooms, and a brown stock sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sweetbreads and Mushrooms En Casserole

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. Blanch the sweetbreads, then place them in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, add salt, and simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain and cut the sweetbreads in half using a silver knife.

Make the sauce

  1. In a casserole, combine diced carrots, string beans, white turnips, green peas, and French beans.

  2. In a saucepan, melt butter and add chopped carrots, onions, and celery; cover and cook 10 minutes over moderate heat, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add flour and stir until it turns a rich brown.

  4. Pour in brown stock, add bay leaf, salt, pepper, cloves, parsley, and mace; cover and simmer 2 hours.

  5. Skim and strain the sauce, then pour enough over the sweetbreads and vegetables to cover.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay the sweetbreads on top of the vegetables and add the chopped mushrooms.

  2. Cover the casserole and seal with a flour and water paste, then bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + beanstop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,443 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the centre of the casserole.
Butter
Carries the vegetable flavours and enriches the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a sauce and browns to add colour and depth.
Brown stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving savoury depth as it simmers.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the sauce base and the vegetable layer.

The step that matters

Browning the flour. Stirring the flour until it turns a rich brown toasts it, which adds colour and nutty depth to the sauce. Stop too early and the sauce tastes pale and raw; go too far and it turns bitter.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, beans, turnip, mushroom, butter, onion, celery):

  1. Lentilsfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, beans, turnip, mushroom, butter, onion, celery. 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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