Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads are boiled and stewed in gravy, then finished with cream, flour, butter, nutmeg, salt, pepper, or coated with crumbs and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Half boil the sweetbreads.

Cook

  1. Stew them in a white gravy.

  2. Add cream, flour, butter, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.

  3. Alternatively, cover them with crumbs, herbs, and seasoning, and brown them in a Dutch oven.

Serve

  1. Serve with butter and mushroom ketchup or gravy.

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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein, which turns tender and delicate when partly boiled and then gently stewed.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the white gravy, giving it a smooth, velvety texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a gravy that clings to the sweetbreads.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour, and helps the crumbs brown if used.

The step that matters

Half boil the sweetbreads. Boiling firms the outer membrane and sets the texture so the sweetbreads hold their shape during stewing or browning. Cooking them too long toughens the delicate meat, so the boil should be brief.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, cream, flour, butter, mushroom. 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.

More sweetbreads recipes

Stewed 38Fried 34Broiled 20Creamed 20Lamb 20Roasted 20 See all 24 →

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes