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Sweetbreads with Gravy

A dish of sweetbreads simmered in a rich gravy with ham essence, mushrooms, truffles, morels, white wine, ketchup, cockscombs, butter, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbreads with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Remove the gills from the sweetbreads.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads until tender.

  3. Take out the sweetbreads.

Make the gravy

  1. Prepare a ladleful of gravy.

  2. Boil the gravy.

  3. Strain the gravy.

  4. Skim off the fat from the gravy.

  5. Let the gravy boil until it jellies.

  6. Add the sweetbreads to the gravy to glaze them.

  7. Add mushrooms to the gravy.

  8. Add truffles to the gravy.

  9. Add morels to the gravy.

  10. Add a glass of white wine to the gravy.

  11. Add two tablespoons of ketchup to the gravy.

  12. Garnish the dish with cockscombs cooked in the gravy.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the essence of ham in a dish.

  2. Arrange the glazed sweetbreads on top of the ham essence.

  3. Optionally, lard the sweetbreads with bacon.

  4. Roast the sweetbreads.

  5. Serve the sweetbreads with butter or gravy.

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

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

  2. Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. White wine + buttertop 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; boiling makes them tender, and glazing in gravy gives them a glossy coating.
Gravy
Forms the sauce base; boiling it down until it jellies gives a glossy, clinging glaze.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and savoury depth to the gravy.
White wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished dish a smooth mouthfeel.
Truffles
Add a strong, aromatic earthy flavour to the gravy.

The step that matters

Let the gravy boil until it jellies. Gravy must reduce enough that its natural gelatin sets when cooled, so it clings to the sweetbreads as a glaze. Under-reduced gravy stays thin and runs off.

“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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