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Entree of Sweetbreads

A dish of boiled sweetbreads served with a sauce of butter, flour, stock, milk, cream, mushrooms, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Entree of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water, then bring to a boil.

  2. Transfer to cold water and trim off all gristle.

  3. Cook in ½ pint of good white stock with carrot, turnip, and herbs for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, melt butter in a pan, add flour, then gradually stir in white stock, milk, and cream until it boils.

  2. Cook for a few minutes, then add cooked mushrooms and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve the sweetbreads cut in two or more pieces with the 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; cooking firms and sets its tender texture while stock flavours it.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the sauce into a smooth, coating consistency.
White stock
Gently flavours the sweetbreads and forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its creaminess.

The step that matters

Adding the stock, milk and cream to the roux. Liquid added gradually while stirring keeps the flour smooth; adding it all at once creates lumps that are hard to remove, so the sauce must be stirred until it boils and thickens.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, flour, butter, milk, cream, mushroom):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, flour, butter, milk, cream, mushroom. 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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