Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbreads, White

Sweetbreads simmered in a white sauce of stock, roux, cream, and seasonings, finished with an egg yolk glaze and garnished with parsley, lemon, or mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, White

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads.

  2. Blanch the sweetbreads.

  3. Cool the sweetbreads.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, add enough white stock to barely cover the sweetbreads.

  2. Thicken the stock with white roux or a mixture of flour and butter.

  3. Add parsley, onion, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  4. Simmer for 2-3 minutes.

  5. Stir in thick cream and add the sweetbreads.

  6. Simmer until cooked through.

  7. Remove herbs from the sauce.

  8. Cool slightly.

  9. Mix a spoonful of sauce with the egg yolk.

  10. Gradually add the egg mixture to the sauce, stirring until smooth.

Serve

  1. Place the sweetbreads on a dish and pour the sauce over them.

  2. Garnish with parsley, lemon, or mushrooms.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 delicate when gently simmered.
White roux or flour and butter
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce that clings to the sweetbreads.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and further thickens the sauce when stirred in gently.
White stock
Provides the savoury liquid base that flavours the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk to the sauce. Egg yolk thickens by setting when heated. If the sauce is too hot when it is added, or the yolk is added in one go, it can scramble into lumps. Cooling the sauce slightly and adding the egg mixture gradually, while stirring, keeps it smooth.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, parsley, onion, pepper, nutmeg, cream, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, parsley, onion, pepper, nutmeg, cream, egg. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes