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Stewed Sweetbreads

Stewed sweetbreads in a sauce of egg yolk, cream, parsley, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Stewed Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Trim the sweetbreads.

  2. Soak the sweetbreads in warm water until they turn white.

  3. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water.

  4. Transfer the sweetbreads to cold water for a short time.

  5. Dry the sweetbreads.

Stew and finish

  1. Place the sweetbreads in well-flavored white stock.

  2. Stew the sweetbreads for 30 minutes.

  3. Beat the egg yolks with cream, finely minced parsley, grated nutmeg, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  4. Add the beaten mixture to the sauce.

  5. Heat the sauce until hot.

  6. Dish the sweetbreads.

  7. Pour the sauce over the sweetbreads.

  8. Serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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
Main protein; soaking and blanching firm and whiten the meat before stewing.
White stock
Liquid that gently cooks the sweetbreads and flavors the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream mixture into a smooth, rich sauce when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce until hot. Once egg yolks are added, the sauce must be heated gently and not allowed to boil. Too much heat can scramble the yolks and curdle the sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, nutmeg, pepper. 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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