Name: Sweetbread Patties
Ingredients: 1 pair sweetbreads; ½ teaspoon pepper; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon cayenne; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 cup rich milk; 1 teaspoon salt; 3 cups mushrooms, cut into pieces; 3 tablespoons vinegar

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweetbread Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Remove sweetbreads from packaging and soak in cold water for 30 minutes.
Drain and place in 1 quart of boiling water with vinegar and salt; simmer for 20 minutes.
Drain again and plunge into cold water.
Remove tubes and membrane from sweetbreads and cut into small pieces.
Make a white sauce, add sweetbreads and mushrooms, and heat until hot.
Serve in Swedish timbales or pastry shells. Omit mushrooms if desired.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together12,525 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,231 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).
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

Mushroom Soup60 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

Brown Bread461 recipes

Mutton Broth292 recipes

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Sweetbread Patties