Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Breads a LA Creme

A creamy mushroom sauce with sweetbreads, served in silver shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sweet Breads a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove all fine membrane and chop the sweetbreads into small pieces.

  3. Chop the mushrooms very finely.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, being careful not to brown it.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the cream, stirring constantly until it boils.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the chopped mushrooms and sweetbreads, and stir over steam for 5 minutes.

  2. Season with salt and a dash of white pepper, then serve in silver shells.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Mushroom + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,253 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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty texture, which becomes tender after parboiling and gentle cooking in the sauce.
Butter
Forms the fat base for the roux, adding richness and a smooth flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, stable sauce by gelatinising its starch.
Cream
Makes the sauce rich and silky, thickening as it reduces when brought to a boil.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, moist texture to the creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Melt the butter without browning it. Browning changes the butter's flavour and colour, so the sauce turns nutty rather than clean and creamy. Low, gentle heat keeps the milk solids pale and the flavour delicate.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

“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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes