Name: Creamed Sweetbreads
Ingredients: parboiled sweetbreads, chopped fine; 1 tablespoon sherry wine; sauce (as for creamed chicken)

Why it works: Sherry and chicken work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 891 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Creamed Sweetbreads

Ingredients

parboiled sweetbreads, chopped fine
1 tablespoon sherry wine
sauce (as for creamed chicken)

Directions

Prepare the sauce as you would for creamed chicken.
Add the chopped sweetbreads to the sauce.
Stir in the sherry wine.

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.

Sherry + chickentop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together891 recipes

Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).
Wine + chickentop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,496 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Sauce + chickentop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sherry + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,097 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Wine + saucetop 32% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,936 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Parboiled sweetbreads: Form the main body of the dish, giving it a tender, chopped texture.
Sherry wine: Adds a light, aromatic flavor and a touch of acidity to the sauce.
Sauce: Coats the chopped sweetbreads, adding moisture and richness.

“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.