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Sweetbreads Au Naturel

Sweetbreads Au Naturel is a dish of blanched lamb sweetbreads baked with cream, salt, pepper, and served with green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Au Naturel

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water, then remove the skins.

  2. Grease a bag thickly and dust each sweetbread lightly with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour 1 tablespoon of cream over each sweetbread and place them in the greased bag.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook in a moderately hot oven (300°F / 150°C) for 40 minutes.

  2. Open the bag and gently slip the sweetbreads onto a hot dish.

  3. Surround with a border of green peas 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. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  2. Cream + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Lamb + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together461 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Cream and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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 is the centre of the dish.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the sweetbreads soft in the bag as they cook.

The step that matters

Removing the skins after blanching. Blanching firms the sweetbreads so their outer membranes can be peeled off cleanly. Skipping or rushing this leaves tough, chewy membrane in the finished dish.

“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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