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Veal Sweetbreads Larded

Larded veal sweetbreads stuffed with bacon, lemon peel, pickled cucumber, and simmered in rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Sweetbreads Larded

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads until cooked, then let them cool.

  2. Lard the sweetbreads down the middle with small pieces of bacon.

  3. On each side, add bits of lemon peel and finely chopped pickled cucumber.

Stew and finish

  1. Stew the sweetbreads gently in rich gravy.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour, then add mushroom powder, cayenne, and salt.

  3. If needed, add a little lemon juice to taste.

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

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

  2. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Cucumber + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  5. Cucumber + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together667 recipes

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

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.
Bacon
Larding adds fat that bastes the meat from within and adds savory flavor during stewing.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the sweetbreads rather than running thin.
Rich gravy
Provides moisture and savory depth as the sweetbreads gently stew.
Pickled cucumber
Adds acidity and a sharp contrast to the rich, fatty meat.

The step that matters

Parboil until just cooked, then cool. Sweetbreads are delicate and overcooking makes them firm and dry. Parboiling only until set keeps them tender for the gentle stew that follows.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, flour, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, flour, mushroom, 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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