Skip to main content
Main

Cannelon of Veal, Oysters, and Sweetbreads

A roll of veal, oysters, and sweetbreads wrapped in pie pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cannelon of Veal, Oysters, and Sweetbreads

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the remains of your stewed fillet.

  2. Boil, blanch, and cool the sweetbreads, then mince them very fine.

  3. Chop the oysters.

  4. Mix the fillet, sweetbreads, oysters, bread crumbs, seasoning, and beaten eggs together to form a paste.

Shape and wrap

  1. Flour your hands and shape the mixture into a roll about 8 inches long and 3-4 inches in diameter.

  2. Wrap the roll in a crust of pie pastry, sealing the ends with rounds of pastry.

  3. Place the roll in a floured baking pan with the sealed edges facing down.

Bake and glaze

  1. Bake in a steady oven at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Just before removing from the oven, glaze with butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 a soft, tender, finely minced body that gives the filling its meaty texture.
Eggs
Bind the minced ingredients together so the filling holds its shape as a paste.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the paste hold together during baking.
Oysters
Add briny, savoury flavour and soft texture to the filling.
Stewed fillet
Supplies the main cooked meat and rich flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry wrap. If the ends of the pastry are not sealed well, the moist filling can leak out during baking. Sealing with pastry rounds keeps the juices inside and the roll intact.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes