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Creamed Sweetbread

A sauce of butter, flour, and liquid thickened with sweetbreads, seasoned with salt and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Creamed Sweetbread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes to form a roux.

  3. Gradually add water or milk to create a white sauce, stirring constantly until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the cooked sweetbreads and season with salt and cayenne.

  2. Heat until hot and serve in a Swedish timbale, on a bread canape, or in a patty dish.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavor while forming the roux base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Cooked sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty texture and body of the creamed dish.

The step that matters

Cooking the roux. Cooking the butter and flour for 1-2 minutes cooks out raw starch taste and helps the flour thicken smoothly. Stirring constantly while adding liquid prevents lumps.

“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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