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Sweetbreads Fricasseed

A savory dish of sweetbreads simmered in a cream‑based gravy with butter, flour, stock, and seasonings.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the sweetbreads and cut them into pieces about 1 inch thick.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Whisk in the flour.

  3. Gradually add enough stock or boiling water to create a gravy the thickness of cream.

  4. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and a little lemon juice.

  5. Heat the sweetbreads in the gravy.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat.

  2. Stir in the hot cream, beaten egg yolks mixed with a little cold cream, and chopped parsley.

  3. Place over hot water for a few minutes 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth gravy.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce gently when stirred in off the heat.
Hot cream
Adds richness and smoothness, giving the gravy a silky body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Removing the pan from heat first and mixing the yolks with cold cream before adding them helps keep the sauce smooth.

“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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