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Sweetbreads and Palates, Stewed

Stewed sweetbreads and palates in veal gravy with lemon, nutmeg, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Sweetbreads and Palates, Stewed

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut sweetbreads and palates into moderate-sized pieces.

  2. Dredge flour over them and fry in hot fat until lightly browned.

Make the sauce

  1. Transfer to a saucepan and stew slowly in enough veal gravy to barely cover them.

  2. Thicken the sauce with brown thickening and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, grated lemon rind, and nutmeg.

  3. Add a glass of sherry or Madeira.

Serve

  1. Serve the meat in a dish and pour the sauce over it.

  2. If desired, add vinegar or strained lemon juice just before serving.

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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sherry + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together660 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main meat that becomes tender when slowly stewed in the gravy.
Palates
Gelatinous meat that adds richness and body to the stewed dish.
Flour
Coats the pieces so they brown in the hot fat and help thicken the surface.
Veal gravy
Forms the savory liquid that the meat stews in and becomes the sauce.
Sherry or madeira
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stewing slowly in just enough gravy. Slow, gentle simmering keeps the sweetbreads tender and prevents them from toughening. Using only enough gravy to barely cover concentrates the sauce rather than diluting it.

“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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