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Sweetbreads a LA Dauphine

A savory dish of stuffed sweetbreads simmered with veal broth, ham, onion, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbreads a LA Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Roast the pullet and remove all flesh from the breast.

  2. Mince the ham very small and mix with lemon peel, parsley, nutmeg, and yolk of egg to form a firm paste.

  3. Open the sweetbreads and stuff them with the mixture, fastening them with small wooden skewers.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, layer thin slices of ham, seasoning with salt, pepper, and mace, followed by thin slices of onion.

  2. Add thin slices of veal on top, then place the stuffed sweetbreads.

  3. Cover the stewpan and cook over low heat for 10 minutes.

  4. Simultaneously, bring veal broth to a boil in another pot.

  5. Pour the boiling broth gently into the stewpan and cover, cooking on very low heat for 2 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the sweetbreads, strain the gravy, skim off the fat, and reduce until only half a pint remains.

  2. Return the sweetbreads to the gravy and stew for 5 minutes until heated through.

  3. Serve the sweetbreads on a dish, pouring gravy over them and garnishing with thin lemon quarters.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and succulent during slow braising.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor that seasons the stuffing and the gravy beneath.
Egg yolk
Binds the minced ham, lemon, parsley and nutmeg into a firm paste that holds its shape.
Veal broth
Provides the liquid base for the gravy, carrying flavor and body from the braise.
Pullet
Roasted flesh from its breast is part of the dish's meaty, savory base.

The step that matters

Keep the braising liquid at a very low simmer. Gentle, low heat lets the sweetbreads become tender without toughening the proteins or breaking the stuffing paste, which would happen if the liquid boiled hard.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chicken, ham, lemon, parsley, nutmeg, egg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chicken, ham, lemon, parsley, nutmeg, egg, 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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