Skip to main content
Main

Sweet- Breads, Fricasseed

A stew of cooked sweetbreads in a butter‑flour gravy, optionally enriched with cream and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet- Breads, Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the sweetbreads

  1. Cut cooked sweetbreads into small pieces.

  2. Stew in a little soup stock or water for 10 minutes.

  3. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make the gravy

  1. Add 2 teaspoons of butter and thicken the gravy with a little flour.

Cook fresh sweetbreads

  1. If using fresh sweetbreads, cut into thin slices and wash.

  2. Cook in water or soup stock for 30 minutes.

Finish the gravy

  1. Make gravy as directed, adding ½ cup cream and 1 well-beaten egg if desired.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender when gently stewed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, carrying flavour and smoothing the texture.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells when heated in the liquid.
Cream
Optional; adds richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the gravy.
Egg
Optional; enriches the gravy and helps give it body when well beaten.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy with flour. Flour must be mixed in evenly so it does not form lumps. Its starch swells and thickens the liquid only when heated, so the gravy needs time to simmer before it reaches full body.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes