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Sweetbreads and Mushrooms

A dish of sweetbreads and mushrooms simmered in a cream sauce with wine or sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine 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 ↓

Sweetbreads and Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads until tender, then cut them into 2‑inch square pieces.

  2. Cook the whole mushrooms in the milk with butter, salt, and pepper until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a rich cream sauce and season it with a few drops of Parisian essence.

  2. Remove the mushrooms one by one and strain the cooking liquid into the cream sauce.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the mushrooms and sweetbreads to the sauce and heat everything together.

  2. Stir in the white wine or sherry before serving.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  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
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, moist texture to the finished dish.
Milk
Cooks the mushrooms and, with the strained liquid, forms the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping carry flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
White wine or sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth that brightens the rich cream sauce.

The step that matters

Parboil the sweetbreads until tender. Parboiling firms and cleans the sweetbreads before cutting, so they hold their shape. Overcooking makes them dry and crumbly, while undercooking leaves them tough and rubbery when heated again in the sauce.

“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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