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Larded Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads larded with butter, flour, salt, and pepper, baked and served in cream or poulette sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Larded Sweetbreads

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Lard the parboiled sweetbreads in even rows.

  2. Sprinkle the sweetbreads with flour, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Bake the sweetbreads in a 400°F (200°C) oven until brown.

  4. Cut the sweetbreads into cubes.

Serve on toast or in cases

  1. Serve the cubes in white sauce on toast, patty cases, or timbale cases.

  2. For ramquin dishes, cut the sweetbreads into small pieces.

  3. Mix the small pieces with cream or poulette sauce.

  4. Butter the dishes well and fill them two-thirds full.

  5. Cover the dishes with buttered crumbs.

  6. Bake the covered dishes in a 400°F (200°C) oven for eight minutes.

  7. Serve immediately, adding mushrooms or oysters if desired.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,500 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, meaty base of the dish once parboiled and baked.
Flour
Helps the surface of the sweetbreads take on a browned crust in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the buttered crumbs brown on top.
Cream or poulette sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess that binds the sweetbreads together.

The step that matters

Baking until brown. Sweetbreads need a hot oven and enough time for surface browning, which depends on dry heat and sugars and proteins at the surface. Underbaking leaves them pale and soft, while overbaking dries the meat.

“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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