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Sweetbread Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Lay puff pastry half an inch thick at the bottom of a deep dish and line the sides with forcemeat.

  3. Place sweetbreads in the dish, followed by artichoke bottoms, cocks' combs, truffles, morels, asparagus tops, fresh mushrooms, hard-boiled egg yolks, and forcemeat balls.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Almost fill the pie with water, cover it, and bake for two hours.

  6. 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. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, 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

Swap the asparagus

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

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

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

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