Name: Sweetbreads with White Sauce
Ingredients: 1 pint cream; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 grated nutmeg; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; ¼ pound butter; Flour (enough to thicken); 2 egg yolks

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbreads with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Parboil the sweetbreads.
In a saucepan, combine cream, parsley, nutmeg, salt, and pepper.
In another bowl, cream the butter and mix in enough flour to thicken.
Remove the cream mixture from heat and quickly stir in the beaten egg yolks.
Serve immediately to prevent curdling.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the parsley

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

Cinnamonfits about as well
Parsleythe original
Tarragonfits about as well
Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, nutmeg, pepper, butter, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.