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Two Sweetbreads a LA Reine and Garnished

A dish of sweetbreads cooked in stock, covered with fat and paper, served with béchamel sauce and garnished with beans, cauliflower, and turnip radishes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 286 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Two Sweetbreads a LA Reine and Garnished

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water, then transfer them to cold water to keep them white.

  2. In a stew-pan, add the stock and the sweetbreads, covering them with sheets of fat and white paper.

  3. Cook for about 10 minutes before serving.

Plate and garnish

  1. Transfer the sweetbreads to a serving dish, not the final one.

  2. Pour béchamel sauce over the sweetbreads, ensuring it is thick enough not to run off.

  3. Cut boiled French beans into strings and leaves, arranging them around the sweetbreads.

  4. Garnish with cauliflower and rose shapes cut from red turnip radishes.

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. Cauliflower + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together286 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cauliflower + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together55 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Turnip + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Beans + cauliflowertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Beans + turniptop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together400 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; their delicate, tender texture is the centre of the dish.
Stock
Gently cooks the sweetbreads and keeps them moist as they simmer.
Sheets of fat
Cover the sweetbreads while cooking, adding moisture and richness.
Béchamel sauce
Thick, creamy coating that adds richness and smooth texture to the sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Blanching and cold water. Boiling briefly firms the sweetbreads and helps whiten them, and the cold water stops the cooking so they stay tender and pale rather than turning grey or tough.

Swap the beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, cauliflower, turnip, radish):

  1. Beansthe original
  2. Lentilsfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits less well
  4. Sesamefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cauliflower, turnip, radish. 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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