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Creamed Sweetbreads and Mushrooms

A creamy dish of sweetbreads and mushrooms simmered in milk and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Creamed Sweetbreads and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil sweetbreads in salted water with a few drops of lemon juice for 20 minutes.

  2. Cut mushrooms in half.

  3. Cut sweetbreads into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the mushrooms in milk and cream for about 30 minutes.

  2. Melt butter in a saucepan and stir in flour.

  3. Add the mixture to the pot.

  4. Add the diced sweetbreads to the mushrooms.

  5. Boil for about 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in ramekins or on slices of toast.

  2. Garnish nicely.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a soft, moist texture to the creamed mixture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce along with the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety body.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor and forms a roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth, stable sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter and adding the mixture to the pot. Flour must be cooked briefly with the butter and whisked into the liquid to avoid lumps. Boiling the sauce afterward lets the starch fully swell and thicken it, giving a smooth, cohesive cream.

“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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