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Fricassee of Sweetbreads

A stew of sweetbreads in cream and gravy with butter, parsley, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads.

  2. Boil them for five minutes.

  3. Transfer the sweetbreads to ice-cold water.

  4. Slice the sweetbreads.

Make the sauce

  1. Cover the sliced sweetbreads with gravy.

  2. Stew for 45 minutes.

  3. In another saucepan, heat the cream with a pinch of baking soda.

  4. Pour the heated cream over the eggs.

  5. Return to the heat and cook for one minute.

  6. Stir in the butter and parsley.

Combine and finish

  1. Combine both saucepans over heat.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and sugar to taste.

  3. After 20 minutes of stewing, add a good piece of butter.

  4. Simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

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

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender main protein that the sauce coats and the stew softens.
Eggs
Thicken the cream mixture as they set gently with heat, giving body to the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the flavour and rounding the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for silky texture and a rounded, rich flavour to the sauce.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid base that the sweetbreads stew in, carrying savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the heated cream over the eggs. Adding hot cream to eggs too quickly can scramble them. Pouring slowly while whisking warms the eggs gradually, so they thicken smoothly into the sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, nutmeg, pepper, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, nutmeg, pepper, sugar. 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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