Skip to main content
Main

Sweet-breads a LA Milanaise

A braised sweetbread dish cooked with bacon, stock, and vegetables, finished with a browned top and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweet-breads a LA Milanaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim all skin and cartilage from the sweet-breads and soak them in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Lard the sweet-breads with small strips of bacon.

Braise

  1. In a braising pan, place the bacon slices at the bottom.

  2. Add the sweet-breads on top of the bacon, ensuring they are not touching the stock.

  3. Pour in enough stock to cover the bottom of the pan without touching the sweet-breads.

  4. Simmer gently for 30-45 minutes, checking occasionally to add stock if it evaporates.

Brown and serve

  1. Once cooked, use a salamander or hot shovel to brown the top of the sweet-breads until pale yellow.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce poured in the center of the dish.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Tomato + celerytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tomato + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,606 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet-breads
Main protein; gentle simmering keeps the tender meat moist and delicate.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor as it renders into the pan and onto the sweet-breads.
Stock
Provides moisture and savory flavor while the sweet-breads gently braise.
Tomato sauce
Adds acidity and bright flavor to balance the rich sweet-breads.

The step that matters

Gentle simmering. Sweet-breads are delicate; a hard boil toughens the meat and can make it dry. Keeping the stock at a gentle simmer and topping it up as it evaporates keeps the sweet-breads tender and moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, tomato, sauce, vinegar, carrot, celery, parsley):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, tomato, sauce, vinegar, carrot, celery, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipes