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Creamed Sweet-breads

Sweetbreads simmered in lemon water, then cooked in a sauce of butter, flour, and cream, seasoned with celery salt, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creamed Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold water, removing pipes and membrane.

  2. Cook in boiling salted water with lemon juice for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain and cover with cold water, changing until cold.

  4. Cut sweetbreads into dice.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt butter. Stir in flour.

  2. Gradually add cream.

  3. Season with celery salt, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Heat the diced sweetbreads in a sauce.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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.
Cream
Supplies richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and forms the roux base with the flour.

The step that matters

Stir in flour and add cream gradually. Cooking flour in melted butter forms a roux; adding cream slowly while stirring prevents lumps and lets the sauce thicken smoothly.

“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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