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Sweetbreads a LA Dacphisk

A stew of sweetbreads cooked with bacon, carrots, onions, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweetbreads a LA Dacphisk

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Remove fat and sinews from the sweetbreads.

  2. Blanch the sweetbreads in warm water.

  3. Parboil the sweetbreads.

  4. Let the sweetbreads cool.

  5. Lard the sweetbreads.

Stew

  1. Grease a stew pan with fresh butter.

  2. Add sliced carrots and onions to the pan.

  3. Layer slices of fat bacon in the pan.

  4. Place the sweetbreads on top of the bacon.

  5. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over the sweetbreads.

  6. Stew with high heat on top and low heat underneath for 45 minutes until browned.

  7. Cover the stew with a round piece of buttered paper.

  8. Reduce the top heat.

Glaze and hold

  1. Drain the sweetbreads.

  2. Place them in a pan with glaze, bacon underneath.

  3. Keep them in the glaze until dinner time.

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

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and savoury when slowly stewed.
Fresh butter
Greases the pan and enriches the stew with fat for richer flavour and browning.
Carrots
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and release flavour into the stew.
Onions
Add aroma and savoury depth as they soften and brown in the pan.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour that seasons the sweetbreads from below.

The step that matters

Stew with high heat on top and low heat underneath for 45 minutes until browned. Gentle bottom heat keeps the sweetbreads from scorching while the higher top heat browns their surface. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds flavour, so the stew should be checked for colour rather than left unattended.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion. 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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