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Baked Sweetbreads

A savory dish of sweetbreads baked with bacon, butter, flour, lemon, wine, and optional sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Baked Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Blanch and parboil the sweetbreads.

  2. Lard the sweetbreads with thin slices of bacon, then place them in a shallow pan with a piece of fresh butter mixed with flour underneath each.

  3. Mix the lemon juice and grated rind with the white wine and pour into the pan.

  4. Season with grated nutmeg or use mushroom catsup mixed with salad oil for sauce.

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. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; cooked gently so the tender texture is kept.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and helps the surface brown.
All-purpose flour
Mixed with the butter to thicken the pan juices into a light sauce.
White wine
Provides moisture and acidity that loosen the pan juices and balance the richness.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the juice and grated rind.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, white wine, nutmeg, mushroom):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, white wine, nutmeg, mushroom. 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.

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