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Sweetbread Soup

A soup made from blanched sweetbreads, stock, celery, herbs, mace, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbread Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads and remove the pipes and fat.

  2. Slice them thinly and place in a saucepan with the stock, herbs, celery, and mace.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes until tender.

Make the soup

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Return to the saucepan and heat until very hot.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix the cream and egg yolks together and strain into the soup.

  2. Cook for 2 minutes without boiling, season, 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,769 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Celery + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,863 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the soup into a smooth, creamy texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished soup.
Stock
Provides the liquid base that carries the flavour of the soup.
Sweetbreads
Main ingredient, becoming tender and delicate after blanching and simmering.

The step that matters

Cook for 2 minutes without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if the soup boils they can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth, silky soup.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, cream, 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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