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Sweet-breads and Peas

A dish of fried sweetbreads served with peas cooked in butter and flour, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet-breads and Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Clean, parboil, trim, and fry the sweetbreads.

Cook the peas

  1. Cook the peas in just enough water to cover them until the water boils down.

  2. Rub together 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour, then stir this into the peas 10 minutes before they are done.

Serve

  1. Trim a platter with cold parsley, arrange the sweetbreads in a row around the platter, and pile the peas in a pyramid in the center.

  2. Ensure everything is hot, but do not place in the oven to avoid wilting the parsley.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peas + parsleytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

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

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 tender, delicate meat that is the centerpiece of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the peas.
Flour
Thickens the butter and pea cooking liquid into a light, coating sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the peas. Rubbing butter and flour together and stirring it in near the end lets the mixture thicken the peas' liquid without lumps. Adding it too early or unevenly can scorch the flour or leave raw floury clumps.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley. 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.

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