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Sweetbread in Cases

A dish of diced cooked sweetbread simmered with mushrooms, butter, flour, milk, egg yolk, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sweetbread in Cases

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Cut the cooked sweetbread into dice.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the mushrooms in butter until tender.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1 minute.

  3. Add the milk gradually, stirring until thickened.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the egg yolk, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  5. Fold in the diced sweetbread and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + milktop 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

Cooked sweetbread
Forms the main body of the filling and supplies the rich, tender texture.
Butter
Fat that softens the mushrooms and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk
Liquid that, heated with the flour, forms the body of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and body when stirred in off the heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Add the egg yolk off the heat. Egg yolk can scramble if it meets high heat. Removing the sauce from the heat before stirring it in lets the yolk thicken it smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

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