Skip to main content
Main

Dutch Sweetbreads

A dish of veal sweetbreads poached in stock with mace, served with white sauce and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Dutch Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Grind the veal and suet to a smooth pulp.

  2. Soak the breadcrumbs in cream or milk until moist but not soggy.

  3. Mix the soaked breadcrumbs with the veal mixture, seasoning, and beaten egg.

  4. Divide the mixture into three portions and shape into sweetbreads.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the sweetbreads in white stock or water flavored with mace and celery for 20 minutes.

  2. Serve with a good white sauce and garnish with slices of 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides the main body of the sweetbreads once ground into a smooth pulp.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender during poaching.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the sweetbreads hold their shape.
Breadcrumbs
Soaked in cream or milk, they add moisture and a softer texture to the mixture.

The step that matters

Soaking the breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs soaked until moist but not soggy absorb liquid without turning mushy, so the mixture stays binding and tender. Too much liquid makes it loose and hard to shape, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, beef, pepper, nutmeg, egg, mace):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, beef, pepper, nutmeg, egg, 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes