Name: Sweetbread, with Sauce Herbacé
Ingredients: 1 calf's sweetbread; ½ pint Sauce Hennack; 12 chicken quenelles; ½ cup cream; macaroni; tongue; truffles

Why it works: Sauce and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweetbread, with Sauce Herbacé

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the sweetbread for 10 minutes in white stock after blanching it.
Place it in cold water for 30 minutes, then cut it into dice.
Add the diced sweetbread to the sauce and keep it at a simmer for 1 hour.
For the garnish, cut the red part of the cooked tongue into fancy shapes and slice the truffles.
Heat the tongue and truffles in clear stock, then dry and glaze the tongue.
Cook the macaroni in white stock, season it, and mix in ½ cup of heated cream.

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.

Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Chicken + truffletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together756 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Sauce + truffletop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,490 recipes
Cream + truffletop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together629 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Sauce + chickentop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,513 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).