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Sweetbreads Aux Fines Herbes

Sweetbreads cooked with mushrooms, fine herbs, parsley, garlic, shallots, butter, bacon, white wine, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scald the sweetbreads and lard them.

  2. Chop the mushrooms, fine herbs, parsley, garlic, and shallots finely.

  3. In a bowl, mix the chopped ingredients with butter and pepper.

  4. Place the bacon slices under and over the sweetbreads.

Cook and serve

  1. Add white wine and stock to the pan.

  2. Stew gently until cooked through.

  3. Skim the sauce and serve it over the sweetbreads.

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 + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  5. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 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
Tender, delicate meat that is the main component of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the chopped herb and shallot mixture.
Bacon
Fat renders during stewing, moistening the sweetbreads and adding savoury flavour.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid, balancing the richness.
Shallots
Provide a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma as they soften in the sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and moisture to the herb mixture.

The step that matters

Stew gently until cooked through. Sweetbreads are delicate and toughen or fall apart if boiled hard. A gentle, steady simmer cooks the meat evenly while keeping it tender and moist.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, parsley, garlic, shallot, butter, pepper, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, parsley, garlic, shallot, butter, pepper, white wine. 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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