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Sweetbreads, Larded and Braised

Braised sweetbreads cooked with salt pork, vegetables, stock, and a brown flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, Larded and Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Scald or boil sweetbreads for 20 minutes.

  2. Cool the sweetbreads under running water.

  3. Clean the sweetbreads thoroughly.

  4. Set the sweetbreads aside.

  5. Lard the sweetbreads with the salt pork strips.

Braise

  1. Melt the butter in a sauté pan.

  2. Add the stock.

  3. Add the chopped carrot, turnip, bay leaves, cloves, onion, and lemon juice.

  4. Cook on low heat until the sweetbreads are tender.

  5. Remove the sweetbreads from the broth.

  6. Skim the grease from the broth.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Add the flour to the remaining broth.

  2. Cook until light brown.

  3. Add the rest of the stock and vegetables to the flour mixture to make gravy.

  4. Strain the gravy over the sweetbreads.

  5. Season the gravy to taste.

  6. 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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the tender main protein that is braised until soft and rich.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory flavor as it melts into the sweetbreads during braising.
Butter
Carries flavor and enriches the braising liquid with fat.
Flour
Thickens the broth into gravy and browns lightly for color and nutty flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty broth.
Onion
Builds savory depth and aroma in the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Cook the flour until light brown. Flour must be cooked long enough to lose its raw taste and gain color before liquid is added; too little cooking leaves the gravy pasty and floury, while over-browning dulls its thickening power.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, carrot, turnip, clove, onion, butter, flour):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, carrot, turnip, clove, onion, butter, flour. 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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