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Curried Sweetbreads

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Curried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix curry powder and dry mustard with milk to form a liquid.

  2. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and add vinegar, lemon juice, and salt.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes, skimming off any foam.

  4. In a separate pot, combine veal gravy with fried onion, vinegar or lemon juice, curry powder, and salt.

  5. Rub butter into flour to thicken the gravy as needed.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mustard, milk, vinegar, butter, flour, veal, onion):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Cherryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mustard, milk, vinegar, butter, flour, veal, onion. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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