Name: Sweetbreads Stewed
Ingredients: sweetbreads; ½ cup water or milk; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 tablespoons flour; 1-2 blades of mace; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon white pepper; 2 tablespoons chopped parsley; lemon slices for garnish

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the sweetbreads.
Place them in a stew pan with water or milk.
Mix butter and flour together, then add to the pan.
Add mace, salt, white pepper, and chopped parsley.
Garnish with thin slices of lemon.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 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: Provide the tender meat that is the main body of the dish.
Butter and flour: Form a roux that thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth sauce.
Water or milk: Forms the stewing liquid that gently cooks the sweetbreads and carries the flavours.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, flour, mace, parsley, lemon):

Nutmegfits better
Marjoramfits better
Thymefits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, mace, parsley, lemon. 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.