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Sweetbreads A-LA-daube

A French-style sweetbread dish braised in veal gravy with bacon, lemon peel, pickled cucumbers, and garnished with celery, spinach, and barberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 355 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Sweetbreads A-LA-daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the sweetbreads in water for 5 minutes, then remove and let cool.

  2. Lard the sweetbreads with bacon pieces down the middle and on each side with lemon peel and pickled cucumbers.

Stew and thicken

  1. Place them in a pan with veal gravy, lemon juice, and browning sauce.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes, then thicken with flour and butter.

Serve

  1. Serve with gravy poured over, garnished with boiled celery or oyster patties, spinach, and barberries.

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. Cucumber + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  3. Celery + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Lemon + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Cucumber + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; boiling firms them so they hold their shape while stewing.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor as the larding pieces melt slightly into the dish.
Veal gravy
Provides the liquid and rich savory base in which the sweetbreads stew.
Flour and butter
Thicken the gravy into a smooth, coating sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances its fat.
Pickled cucumbers
Add acidity and a sharp contrast to the rich sweetbreads and gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 15 minutes. Boiling vigorously toughens the delicate sweetbread membranes and can break the tender meat apart. A gentle simmer keeps them moist and tender while the gravy flavors them.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, veal, sauce, flour, butter, celery, spinach):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, veal, sauce, flour, butter, celery, spinach. 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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