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Ragout of Sweetbreads

A savory ragout made with stewed mushrooms, egg balls, blanched sweetbreads, boiled cock's combs, consommé, egg yolks, cream, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,500 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Ragout of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the ragout

  1. Combine stewed mushrooms, egg balls, slices of blanched sweetbreads, and boiled cock's combs with the consommé in a stewpan.

  2. Stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Pour the liquid into another stewpan and reduce it over heat to half the quantity.

Finish with the cream

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the cream and salt.

  2. Strain through a fine sieve into the stewpan with the sweetbreads.

  3. Place over low heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich texture when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the flavour of the consommé.
Consommé
Forms the flavourful liquid base that the sauce is reduced from.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils or simmers too hard, the proteins scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Keep the heat low and the liquid barely moving.

“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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