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Sweetbreads of Veal a-LA-Dauphine

A veal sweetbread dish stuffed with bacon, anchovy, spices, and egg yolks, simmered in a savory broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sweetbreads of Veal a-LA-Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the sweetbreads and stuff them with forcemeat made from bacon, anchovy, nutmeg, lemon peel, thyme, parsley, and egg yolks.

  2. Fasten the sweetbreads together with fine skewers.

  3. In a stewpan, layer slices of bacon seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, cloves, and onion.

  4. Place thin slices of veal on top, followed by the stuffed sweetbreads.

Stew and reduce

  1. Cover and cook over low heat for 8-10 minutes.

  2. Pour in boiling water and let it stew gently for 2 hours.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads.

  4. Strain the gravy.

  5. Boil the gravy until reduced to ½ pint.

Serve

  1. Return the sweetbreads to the pan.

  2. Stew for 3 minutes.

  3. Pour the gravy over them.

  4. 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender meat that is stuffed, stewed and served in the gravy.
Bacon
Adds savoury fat and smoky flavour to the forcemeat and the braising layer.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together inside the sweetbreads.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and flavour to the braising liquid and gravy.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy until reduced to ½ pint. Reducing concentrates the flavour and thickens the liquid by evaporating water, so the gravy becomes rich rather than thin and watery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, anchovy, nutmeg, lemon, thyme, parsley, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, anchovy, nutmeg, lemon, thyme, parsley, 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.

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