Name: Fried Sweetbreads
Ingredients: throat sweetbreads; batter; artichoke bottoms; melted butter; ground white pepper

Why it works: Artichoke and butter work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 893 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the throat sweetbreads and cut them into slices.
Boil the artichoke bottoms until the leaves can be removed.
Cut the artichoke bottoms in half and fry them in batter.
Serve the fried artichoke bottoms with melted butter and a sprinkle of ground white pepper.

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.

Artichoke + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together893 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Artichoke + white peppertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together31 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,814 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).