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Lamb's Sweetbreads

A stew of lamb sweetbreads with broth, onions, asparagus tops, mace, and a custard-like egg‑cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb's Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads and place them in cold water.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine sweetbreads, broth, pepper, salt, button onions, asparagus tops, and mace.

  2. Stir in a bit of butter and flour, then stew for 1 hour.

Finish and serve

  1. In a bowl, beat the yolks of 2 or 3 eggs with cream, parsley, and nutmeg.

  2. After stewing, add the egg mixture to the stew without boiling, stirring constantly to prevent curdling.

  3. Optionally, add young French beans or peas.

  4. Serve garnished with lemon.

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

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

  2. Onion + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + asparagustop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  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, meaty main body of the dish that absorbs the stew flavours.
Butter
Adds richness and, with flour, thickens the stew base for a smoother texture.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid when cooked with butter, giving body to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the finished sauce, giving it a silky, custard-like body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce and balancing the egg yolks.
Broth
Provides the savoury liquid base that the stew cooks in.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but scramble and curdle if they reach boiling point. Removing the stew from heat or keeping it below a simmer, while stirring constantly, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, onion, asparagus, butter, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, asparagus, butter, flour, egg, cream. 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.

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