Skip to main content
Main

Fricassee of Sweet-Breads

A savory stew of sliced sweetbreads simmered in butter, flour, stock, and seasonings, finished with an egg‑cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fricassee of Sweet-Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in iced water for 1 hour.

  2. Place the sweetbreads in a saucepan, cover with cold water, and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Transfer the sweetbreads to a basin of cold water to whiten.

  4. Remove the outer casing and slice them thinly.

Make the sauce and simmer

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Stir in the flour.

  2. Add the stock and stir until it boils.

  3. Add the sliced sweetbreads. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg until light. Mix with cream and parsley.

  2. Stir into the sweetbreads off the heat.

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

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the fricassee.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and with the flour forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth sauce.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the sauce when stirred in off the heat without curdling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the finished sauce.
White stock
Supplies the liquid base that the flour thickens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the egg and cream into the sweetbreads off the heat. Egg proteins set at moderate heat and can scramble or curdle if the mixture is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before stirring in the egg-cream mixture lets it thicken the sauce gently and keeps it smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, cream, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, cream, nutmeg, pepper. 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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes