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Sweetbreads a LA Poulette

A dish of sweetbreads cooked in a butter‑flour sauce with cream and egg yolks, finished with lemon and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 a LA Poulette

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Prepare the sweetbreads as directed in the first recipe and cut them into walnut‑sized pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour over medium heat without browning.

  3. Gradually add boiling water, stirring continuously until the sauce is thick like very thick cream.

  4. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  5. Add the sweetbreads and heat through without boiling.

Enrich and serve

  1. In another saucepan, bring the cream to a boil.

  2. Remove the cream from heat.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with a tablespoon of cold cream in a bowl.

  4. Slowly mix in a spoonful of the hot sauce to the egg yolks until smooth.

  5. Stir this mixture into the hot sauce.

  6. Stir quickly and do not boil again.

  7. Keep warm over a bain‑marie if needed.

  8. Sprinkle with chopped parsley 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when gently heated, giving a smooth, velvety texture.
Flour
Forms a roux with the butter that thickens the sauce to a creamy body.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour for the roux base of the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolks into the sauce without boiling. Egg yolks begin to scramble and curdle above about 80°C, so the sauce must stay hot but not boil after the yolk mixture is added. Tempering with hot sauce first prevents lumps.

“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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