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Sweetbread Pie

A savory pie filled with sweetbreads, artichoke bottoms, cocks' combs, morels, asparagus tops, mushrooms, egg yolks, and forcemeat, topped with veal gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Artichoke and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 165 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Sweetbread Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Lay puff pastry at the bottom of a dish and line the sides with forcemeat.

  3. Cut sweetbreads into pieces and place them in the dish.

Fill and bake

  1. Add artichoke bottoms, cocks' combs, morels, asparagus tops, mushrooms, egg yolks, and forcemeat balls.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add plenty of water, cover the pie, and bake for 2 hours.

Finish

  1. After baking, pour in rich veal gravy thickened with cream and flour.

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. Artichoke + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Artichoke + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Asparagus + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Artichoke + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together447 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Asparagus + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the centre of the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky shell that browns in the oven and holds the filling.
Forcemeat
Lines the sides and forms balls that bind and enrich the filling as it cooks.
Veal gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth, thickened with cream and flour for a smooth sauce.
Morels
Contribute an earthy, aromatic flavour and a meaty texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the covered pie. The pie bakes covered with plenty of water for two hours. Enough liquid must stay in the dish so the sweetbreads and vegetables cook gently and do not dry out, while the pastry sets and browns.

Swap the asparagus

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (artichoke, mushroom, egg, pepper, veal, cream, flour):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusthe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against artichoke, mushroom, egg, pepper, veal, cream, flour. 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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