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Sweetbreads Stewed

Stewed sweetbreads with forcemeat, bacon, anchovy, spices, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Fasten the sweetbreads together with splinter skewers.

Stew

  1. Place them in a pan with slices of veal on top and bacon underneath.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, cloves, herbs, and sliced onion.

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

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

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the sweetbreads, strain and skim the broth, and boil it down to half a pint.

  2. Warm the sweetbreads in the broth and serve with lemon slices.

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 + thymetop 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
Main protein, which turns tender and succulent during the long, gentle stew.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat stuffing so it holds together when cooked.
Forcemeat of fowl
Forms a moist, rich stuffing that keeps the sweetbreads juicy.
Broth
Provides the liquid for stewing, later reduced to a concentrated sauce.
Slices of veal
Adds savory meatiness and body to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Gentle stewing after the broth is added. Holding the liquid at a gentle simmer keeps the sweetbreads tender; a hard boil toughens the proteins and can break the delicate meat apart.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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