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Sweet-bread Patties

A savory patty made from boiled sweetbreads, milk, butter, flour, and spices, wrapped in a pie crust and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Sweet-bread Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter, add flour, and stir to form a roux.

  2. Gradually add milk, stirring until thickened.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Add chopped sweetbreads to the sauce and keep warm.

Make the pastry

  1. For the pie crust, mix flour, butter, and salt until crumbly.

  2. Add cold water to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut rounds with a biscuit cutter.

  4. Place rounds on a baking sheet.

  5. Use a smaller cutter to cut halfway through the center of each round.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  2. Remove centers, fill with sweetbreads, and place the cut-out on top.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the main filling, becoming tender and savory once cooked in the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, thickening with flour into a creamy binder.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a sauce, and forms the structure of the pastry.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and shortening that makes the pastry tender and flaky.

The step that matters

Cut the pastry rounds and bake until golden. Cold, well-worked fat in the dough creates flakiness when it melts and steams in the oven. Rolling to an even thickness and cooking until golden helps the pastry bake through and brown evenly.

“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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