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Stuffed and Stewed Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads stuffed with forcemeat are braised in broth, wine, and aromatics, then served in reduced stock with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Stuffed and Stewed Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads and stuff them with a forcemeat of fowl, bacon, anchovy, nutmeg, lemon peel, parsley, cayenne, thyme, and egg yolks.

  2. Fasten the sweetbreads with skewers and place them in a pan with veal slices on top and bacon underneath.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, mace, cloves, herbs, and onion.

Stew

  1. Cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes.

  2. Add 1 quart of broth and stew gently for 2 hours.

Reduce and serve

  1. Remove the sweetbreads, strain and skim the broth, then boil it down to ½ pint.

  2. Warm the sweetbreads in the reduced broth and serve with sliced 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein that becomes tender and succulent during slow, gentle stewing.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when the sweetbreads cook.
Broth
Liquid that gently cooks the sweetbreads and becomes the reduced sauce.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour that seasons the meat as it cooks.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Stew gently over low heat. Sweetbreads are delicate, and a hard boil or high heat over two hours can toughen the proteins and make the meat dry and firm. Gentle heat keeps them tender.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, lemon, white wine, vinegar, anchovy):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, lemon, white wine, vinegar, anchovy. 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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