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Sweetbreads

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Sweetbreads

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Wash and peel the mushrooms.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons of butter, add lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add mushrooms, cover, and cook slowly for 20 minutes.

  4. In another saucepan, melt 4 tablespoons of butter, add flour, and mix thoroughly.

  5. Pour in 1 teacup of rich stock and boil while stirring for a few minutes.

  6. Add cream, mushrooms, and sweetbreads, then season with salt and pepper.

  7. Cool the mixture and fill 12 buttered patty pans lined with puff pastry.

  8. Cover with more puff pastry, brush with beaten egg, and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 20 minutes.

  9. Serve immediately.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, pepper, flour, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More sweetbread recipes

Salad 73Croquettes 61Fried 37Fricassee 27Broiled 19Pie 19 See all 37 →

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