Skip to main content
Main

Creamed Sweetbreads

Creamed sweetbreads are sweetbreads cooked in a white sauce of butter, flour, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mushroom and chicken are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓

Creamed Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sweetbread sauce

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads, then cut them into small pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne to make a white sauce.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring until thickened, then add the sweetbreads.

Serve

  1. Reheat the mixture and serve in Swedish timbales, patty shells, or canapés.

  2. If desired, add mushrooms, peas, or diced chicken, increasing the sauce to 1½ cups.

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. Mushroom + chickentop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Milk + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the creamed dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce that holds the sweetbreads.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour cook into the sauce base.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, giving it a creamy texture as it thickens.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, stirring until thickened. Adding milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, preventing lumps and producing a smooth, thick white sauce.

“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.

You might also like

Chicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipesCreamed ChickenCreamed Chicken89 recipesChicken PanadaChicken Panada75 recipes