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Fricasse of Sweetbreads

A dish of sweetbreads sautéed with mushrooms, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Fricasse of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for a few hours.

  2. Blanch them in boiling water for 5 minutes, then cool and remove any membranes.

Cook

  1. Sauté the sweetbreads in butter until golden brown.

  2. Add sliced mushrooms and cook until tender.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory, earthy flavor as they soften in the pan.
Butter
Browns the sweetbreads and adds richness and a nutty aroma.

The step that matters

Sauté the sweetbreads until golden brown. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs a dry, hot surface. Crowding the pan or leaving the sweetbreads wet from blanching will steam them instead, leaving them pale and less flavorful.

“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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