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Sweetbreads Larded

Sweetbreads larded with pork, baked and served with peas and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Larded

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the sweetbreads for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove from water and draw thin slices of pork through each sweetbread.

  3. Dredge with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve with green peas seasoned with salt and butter, and cover with cream sauce.

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

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 dish.
Slices of pork
Threaded through the sweetbreads to add fat and moisture as they cook.
Flour
Coats the surface so it can take on colour and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the green peas, carrying flavour across the dish.

The step that matters

Drawing the pork through the sweetbreads. Thin, evenly spaced slices of pork need to be threaded through so fat melts into the meat during baking, keeping the sweetbreads moist and preventing them from drying out.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Beansfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour, butter, cream, sauce. 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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