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Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads simmered in stock, Worcestershire sauce, sherry, onion juice, and cream, served on toast or ramekins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan and add flour to fry until golden brown.

  2. Stir in the stock, Worcestershire sauce, onion juice, salt, pepper, and mace.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the sweetbreads and simmer for a few minutes.

  2. Stir in the cream and sherry just before serving.

  3. Serve on toast or in ramekin dishes, garnished with chopped parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth, lightly coated sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the finished sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour and gives the base of the sauce a rich flavor.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that becomes the savory body of the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and sherry. Cream can curdle or separate if boiled hard, and sherry's aroma fades with prolonged heat. Stirring them in just before serving keeps the sauce smooth and fragrant.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, sherry, onion, cream, pepper, parsley, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, sherry, onion, cream, pepper, parsley, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More sweetbreads recipes

Stewed 38Fried 34Broiled 20Creamed 20Lamb 20Roasted 20 See all 24 →

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