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Ragout of Sweetbreads

A savory ragout made with sweetbreads, mushrooms, stewed tomatoes, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Ragout of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads for 10 minutes.

  2. Soak them in ice-cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Wipe dry and cut into dice.

Make the ragout

  1. Add diced mushrooms and stew in enough broth to cover for 10 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add ½ cup strained stewed tomatoes and 1 tablespoon browned flour mixed with butter.

  4. Boil sharply and serve.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; the boiling and soaking firm and clean them before the dish is stewed.
Mushrooms
Add savoury flavour and moisture as they stew in the broth.
Stewed tomatoes
Add acidity and body to the sauce.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats and gives a toasted, nutty flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil sharply and serve. Flour thickens only once its starch heats and swells in liquid. A brisk boil after the flour and butter are added cooks the flour through, thickens the sauce evenly and removes any raw floury taste.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, mushroom, flour, butter):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mushroom, flour, 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.

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