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Ragout of Sweetbreads

A savory ragout made with sweetbreads, mushrooms, tomatoes, and browned flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,719 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Ragout of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads for 10 minutes.

  2. Soak them in ice-cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Wipe dry and cut into dice.

Make the ragout

  1. Add diced mushrooms and stew in broth for 10 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Stir in strained stewed tomatoes and browned flour mixed with butter.

  4. Boil sharply and serve.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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, delicate meat that forms the body of the ragout.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a soft, moist texture as they stew in the broth.
Browned flour
Thickens the liquid so the ragout becomes a smooth, lightly coating sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the browned flour so it blends without lumps.
Stewed tomatoes
Contribute acidity and a bright, savoury tomato flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil sharply and serve. Thickening with browned flour needs a brisk boil to cook out the raw starch taste and fully thicken the sauce. Serving it too early leaves it thin and floury-tasting.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, flour, butter, pepper. 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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