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Sweetbreads , Stewed

Stewed sweetbreads simmered in consommé with sugar, salt, arrowroot, and tarragon, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and tarragon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sweetbreads , Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in water for 6 hours, changing the water 3 or 4 times.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads in water for 5 minutes.

  3. Place the boiled sweetbreads on a plate with another plate on top until cool.

Make the stew

  1. Fry the cooled sweetbreads in butter until browned.

  2. Combine the sweetbreads, consommé, sugar, and salt in a stewpan.

  3. Simmer the mixture until tender.

  4. If using No. 2 consommé, add mixed arrowroot to the stock.

  5. Add tarragon to the stew.

  6. Heat the stew until just boiling.

  7. Remove the stew from heat.

Serve

  1. Cut each sweetbread into 3 equal portions.

  2. Place the portions in an entrée dish.

  3. Pour sauce over the portions and serve.

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. Arrowroot + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + tarragontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,572 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + arrowroottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Butter + arrowroottop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together610 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Browns the sweetbreads and adds rich flavour and fat to the dish.
Consommé
Supplies the liquid that cooks the sweetbreads and forms the savoury sauce.
Mixed arrowroot
Thickens the consommé into a smoother, glossier sauce when using No. 2 consommé.
Sugar
Adds a slight sweetness that rounds out the savoury consommé.
Green tarragon
Adds a fresh, aniseed-like aroma to the stew.

The step that matters

Fry the cooled sweetbreads in butter until browned. Butter can burn before the surface browns, which makes the flavour bitter. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction between proteins and sugars at the surface, so moderate heat and dry sweetbreads give an even golden colour and deeper flavour.

Swap the tarragon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, arrowroot):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Tarragonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, arrowroot. 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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