Name: Egg Salmagundi with Lamb’s Sweetbreads
Ingredients: 6 eggs; 2 ounces butter; 1 cup thick cream; 1 tablespoon chopped mushrooms; 1 lamb’s sweetbread

Why it works: Butter and mushroom 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 ↓

Egg Salmagundi with Lamb’s Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the egg mixture

Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat.
Chop the sweetbreads and fry them with the mushrooms in the butter until cooked through.
Beat the eggs and mix them with the cream.
Pour the egg and cream mixture into the saucepan.
Stir gently over low heat until the mixture thickens.

Serve

Serve with croutons of fried bread.

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.

Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mushroom + lambtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,500 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Set and thicken the mixture as they cook, giving the dish its body.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, and cooks the sweetbreads and mushrooms.
Thick cream: Adds moisture and richness, keeping the eggs soft and creamy.
Lamb's sweetbread: Provides the main meaty texture and rich flavour in the dish.

The step that matters

Stir gently over low heat until the mixture thickens. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, and high heat or vigorous stirring can overcook them, leaving the mixture grainy or curdled instead of smooth.

“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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Egg Salmagundi with Lamb’s Sweetbreads