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Sweetbread Souffle

A steamed sweetbread soufflé flavored with bread crumbs, spices, lemon, 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 lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sweetbread Souffle

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads, then trim and cut them very fine.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, salt, pepper, cayenne, lemon juice, cream, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites until well combined.

Steam and serve

  1. Turn the mixture into a buttered mold and cover with greased paper.

  2. Steam over gently boiling water for 30 to 40 minutes if using a large mold, or 20 to 25 minutes for individual molds.

  3. Unmold and serve with Bechamel or Asparagus Sauce.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Bread + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,445 recipes

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

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main body of the souffle, finely cut so they set evenly through the mixture.
Eggs
Beaten whites trap air for lift, and the yolks help bind and set the mixture as it steams.
Soft bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add tenderness, helping the mixture hold together without becoming dense.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the souffle soft and delicate as it cooks.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air bubbles in the whites intact. Stirring or deflating them makes the souffle heavy and less able to rise and set light.

“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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