Skip to main content
Main

Braised Sweetbreads

Braised sweetbreads simmered in a butter, flour, and vegetable gravy, then baked and served with mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Braised Sweetbreads

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Clean the sweetbreads and soak them for 1 hour in 2 quarts of cold water with 2 tablespoons of salt.

  2. After soaking, drop the sweetbreads into boiling water for 2 minutes.

  3. Arrange the sweetbreads in a deep baking pan.

Make the gravy

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter with the herbs and vegetables over low heat for 15 minutes.

  2. Add the flour and stir until frothy.

  3. Gradually add the water while stirring continuously.

  4. Once the mixture boils, stir in the meat extract, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  5. Cook for 5 minutes and strain the gravy over the sweetbreads.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pan and bake in a moderately hot oven (350°F / 175°C) for 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes with the gravy.

  2. Arrange the sweetbreads on a warm dish and pour brown mushroom sauce around them.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Are the main protein; soaking and brief blanching firm and whiten them before braising.
Butter
Carries the herbs and vegetables and adds richness to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the butter and water.
Extract of beef
Adds concentrated savoury meaty flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Basting the sweetbreads during the bake. Regular basting with the gravy keeps the surface moist during the long hour in the oven, so the meat does not dry out while it braises.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, carrot, pepper, beef, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, carrot, pepper, beef, parsley, lemon. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipes