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To Lard and Stew Sweetbreads

A dish of sweetbreads larded with bacon and stewed in a flour‑stock sauce, finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

To Lard and Stew Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in salt water for an hour.

  2. Rinse the sweetbreads well.

  3. Prepare boiling water for blanching.

  4. Place the sweetbreads in cold water.

  5. Trim the sweetbreads.

  6. Boil the sweetbreads for ten minutes.

  7. Cut the bacon into one-inch long slices.

  8. Insert the bacon slices thickly into the sweetbreads using a larding needle.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. Mix flour with stock to make a sauce.

  2. Stir the sauce until it boils.

  3. Add the sweetbreads to the sauce.

  4. Stew the sweetbreads in the sauce for 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the sweetbreads to a dish.

  2. Add cream to the sauce.

  3. Pour the sauce over the sweetbreads.

  4. 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. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein; soaking, blanching and stewing make them tender and mild.
White bacon
Larded into the sweetbreads, it adds fat and savory flavor as it renders during stewing.
Flour
Mixed with stock, it thickens the liquid into a sauce that coats the sweetbreads.
Cream
Stirred into the sauce at the end, it adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Stew the sweetbreads gently in the sauce. Sweetbreads are delicate; a hard boil can toughen their proteins and break up the sauce. Keeping the stew at a gentle simmer keeps them tender and the sauce smooth.

“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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