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Sweetbread a LA Princesse

A dish of sweetbread simmered in velouté sauce with mushrooms, topped with egg yolk cream sauce, served on fried bread with tomato garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sweetbread a LA Princesse

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the sweetbread

  1. Prepare the sweetbread as for "Sweetbread à la Italienne".

  2. Place it in a stew pan with the velouté sauce and mushroom trimmings.

  3. Simmer gently until tender, about 1 to 1.5 hours.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the egg yolks and cream with the sauce.

  2. Thicken the mixture without boiling.

Prepare the tomatoes and serve

  1. Transfer the sweetbread onto the fried bread.

  2. Pour the sauce over the sweetbread.

  3. Cut the tomatoes in half. Scoop out some pulp. Season the tomatoes.

  4. Bake the tomatoes in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  5. Fill the tomatoes with heated peas.

  6. Arrange the tomatoes at each end of the sweetbread.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Forms the tender main body of the dish, becoming soft and delicate when simmered gently.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's texture and flavour.
Velouté sauce
Provides the base sauce that carries flavour and coats the sweetbread.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture without boiling. Egg yolks scramble and curdle if they get too hot, so the sauce must be thickened gently to stay smooth and creamy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, egg, cream, pepper, mushroom, bread, tomato):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Cherryfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, egg, cream, pepper, mushroom, bread, tomato. 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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