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Lamb Sweetbreads, Scalloped

Scalloped lamb sweetbreads with mushrooms, cream, and egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Lamb Sweetbreads, Scalloped

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads and boil them for 10 minutes.

  2. Transfer to cold water, drain, dry, and slice thinly.

Cook and season

  1. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Fry in butter until browned.

  3. Dredge with flour and pour boiling cream over them.

  4. Add sliced mushrooms and shake the pan over the heat for a few minutes.

  5. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix a teaspoon of sauce with the egg yolks and gradually add to the mixture.

  2. Stir over heat until hot and serve in the center of a rice border.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Fat for frying, which browns the sweetbreads and adds rich flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce that coats the sweetbreads.
Boiling cream
Forms the rich sauce, adding moisture and a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce, giving it body and a smooth finish.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor that complements the sweetbreads and cream.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Mixing them with a little warm sauce first, then adding gradually, tempers them so the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream, mushroom. 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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