Name: Vol Au Vent of Sweetbreads
Ingredients: ½ lb puff pastry; 1 tin sweetbreads; 1 tin oysters; 24 button mushrooms; 1 pint white sauce (tinned); Cayenne pepper, to taste; Coarse sea salt, to taste; 2 eggs

Why it works: Mushroom and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vol Au Vent of Sweetbreads

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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Prepare a vol-au-vent case using puff pastry and bake until golden brown.

Make the filling

Mince the sweetbreads and combine them with the oysters, mushrooms, white sauce, cayenne, and salt.
Add the eggs to the mixture and heat until hot but not boiling.

Serve

Fill the vol-au-vent case with the mixture and serve hot.

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.

Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,103 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + saucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,233 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Oyster + mushroomtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,299 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,480 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry: Forms the flaky, crisp case that holds the filling.
Sweetbreads: Provide the main meaty filling, becoming tender when minced and heated.
White sauce: Adds moisture and binds the filling together.
Eggs: Thicken the mixture as they heat, giving it a set, creamy texture.
Button mushrooms: Add moisture and savoury, earthy flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture with the eggs. Eggs thicken when heated gently, but boiling can curdle them and leave the filling grainy. Heat only until hot and let it thicken slowly.

“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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Vol Au Vent of Sweetbreads