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Sweetbread Pudding

A baked pudding made with sweetbreads, butter, eggs, bread crumbs, spices, parsley, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbread Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Blanch and prepare the sweetbreads as usual.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan.

Make the pudding

  1. In a bowl, mix the sweetbreads, eggs, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, parsley, and cream.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased baking dish.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until set and golden brown.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, meaty body that forms the bulk of the pudding.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown.
White bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and lighten the texture so the pudding holds its shape.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the custard soft and smooth.

The step that matters

Bake until set and golden brown. Eggs set as they heat, so pulling the pudding too early leaves it runny, while overbaking makes the eggs tight and dry and the crust too dark.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, pepper, cream. 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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