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Sweetbreads Patties

Sweetbread patties are made from boiled sweetbreads mixed with butter, cayenne pepper, parsley, thick cream, wrapped in puff pastry, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads and remove all skin and fatty matter.

  2. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour off the hot water and add enough cold water to cover them.

  4. Stew until tender.

Make the filling

  1. Season with salt, butter, cayenne pepper, and chopped parsley.

  2. Stir in the thick cream.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare puff pastry and bake as you would tarts.

  2. Brush the patties with egg yolk before baking.

  3. Bake the patties a day before serving.

  4. Heat the sweetbreads and fill the patties just before serving.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the tender, rich meat that makes up the filling.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness to the filling, giving it a smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered shell that holds the filling.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the patties to promote browning and a glossy finish when baked.

The step that matters

Stew the sweetbreads until tender. Sweetbreads must be cooked gently and fully through; the parboiling and cold-water step removes impurities and firms the texture, and undercooked sweetbreads stay tough and rubbery in the filling.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, 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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