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Sweetbreads of Veal a-LA-Dauphine

Veal sweetbreads stuffed with bacon and herbs, simmered in a rich gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sweetbreads of Veal a-LA-Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Open the sweetbreads to stuff with forcemeat.

  2. Make forcemeat by mixing bacon, anchovy, nutmeg, lemon peel, thyme, parsley, and egg yolks in a mortar.

  3. Fill the sweetbreads with forcemeat and secure with wooden skewers.

Braise

  1. Layer bacon in a stew-pan, season with pepper, salt, mace, cloves, and onion.

  2. Add thin slices of veal and the stuffed sweetbreads on top.

  3. Cover and cook over low heat for 8-10 minutes.

  4. Pour in boiling water or broth and simmer gently for 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Remove sweetbreads and keep warm.

  2. Strain gravy.

  3. Skim off fat.

  4. Boil the gravy until reduced to about ½ pint.

  5. Return sweetbreads to the gravy and simmer for 2-3 minutes.

  6. Serve sweetbreads in a dish and pour gravy over them.

  7. Garnish 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together inside the sweetbreads when cooked.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the forcemeat and to the braising liquid.
Sweetbreads
Tender main protein that is stuffed, braised and served in the gravy.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and body to the braising liquid and gravy.
Veal (in the method)
Lays beneath the sweetbreads and enriches the braising liquid with meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the sweetbreads tender and prevents the liquid from boiling hard, which would toughen the proteins and cloud the gravy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, nutmeg, lemon, thyme, parsley, egg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, nutmeg, lemon, thyme, parsley, egg, 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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