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German Sweet-breads

A dish of boiled sweetbreads served in a butter‑flour sauce flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

German Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads in water with salt.

  2. Remove all the fat and cut into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, add flour, and stir until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the cooking water to the flour mixture until it thickens to a cream-like consistency.

  3. Flavor the sauce with lemon juice.

  4. Add the chopped sweetbreads.

  5. Bring to a gentle boil.

  6. Just before serving, stir in a beaten egg mixed with a little water to prevent curdling.

  7. Serve with a lemon on the side for additional seasoning.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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 forms the body of the dish.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and cooking liquid into a smooth, cream-like sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Egg
Adds richness and body to the sauce when stirred in at the end.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the cream-like sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the beaten egg. Egg proteins can curdle when overheated, so the egg should be tempered with a little water and added just before serving, with the sauce kept at a gentle heat rather than a hard boil.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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