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Vol-au-vent of Sweetbreads, Mushrooms, and Potato Balls

A baked bread case filled with sweetbread, mushroom, and potato ball mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Vol-au-vent of Sweetbreads, Mushrooms, and Potato Balls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the loaf

  1. Order a two-pound loaf of bread, bake it in an oval cake tin, and let it be one day old.

  2. Cut off the top of the loaf and scoop out the crumb, leaving ¾ inch all around and at the bottom.

  3. Pare off the crust and dip the loaf into ½ cup oiled butter; bake in a 400°F oven for 20 minutes.

  4. Redip the loaf in butter and bake until pale bright brown.

Prepare the sweetbreads and sauce

  1. Cut off the pith and skin of the sweetbreads, blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes, then cut into equal pieces and soak in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Dry the sweetbreads and dredge them with 2 tablespoons baked flour.

  3. Rub a stewpan with garlic, add 2 ounces butter, sweetbreads, 1 teaspoon salt, ¼ teaspoon white pepper, grated nutmeg, lemon rind, parsley, bay leaf, mace, cloves, lemon juice, white wine, and veal stock; bring to a boil, skim, then simmer for 45 minutes.

  4. Remove the sweetbreads, skim and strain the sauce, then add 2 beaten egg yolks and ½ cup thick cream; boil for 2 minutes.

Cook the mushrooms and potatoes

  1. Remove the skin from the mushrooms, boil in 1 pint boiling water with ¼ teaspoon salt and lemon juice for 12 minutes, then drain.

  2. Boil the potatoes with ½ teaspoon salt until tender.

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

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Butter
Provides fat for flavor and gives the loaf a golden, browned crust.
Veal stock
Supplies savory depth that forms the base of the sauce.
Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the filling.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks and cream to the sauce. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated, but if the sauce boils hard or too long after they go in, the proteins can tighten and curdle, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, mace):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, flour, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, mace. 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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