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Sweetbreads a LA Baupiiine

A stew of sweetbreads cooked with bacon, carrots, onions, and seasoned with coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweetbreads a LA Baupiiine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Pare off the fat and sinews from the sweetbreads.

  2. Blanch the sweetbreads in warm water.

  3. Parboil the sweetbreads.

  4. Let the sweetbreads cool.

  5. Lard the sweetbreads.

Stew

  1. Grease a stew-pan with fresh butter.

  2. Add sliced carrots and onions to the pan.

  3. Layer slices of fat bacon in the pan.

  4. Place the sweetbreads on top of the bacon.

  5. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over the sweetbreads.

  6. Stew the sweetbreads with high heat on top and low heat beneath for 45 minutes.

  7. Once browned, cover with a round piece of buttered paper.

  8. Reduce the top heat.

Glaze and serve

  1. Drain the sweetbreads.

  2. Place them in a pan with glaze and bacon underneath.

  3. Leave in the glaze until dinner.

  4. Drain again.

  5. Glaze to a fine brown before serving.

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and rich when slowly stewed.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that bastes the sweetbreads and keeps them moist during stewing.
Butter
Greases the pan and adds richness and browning to the surface.
Carrots
Flavor base that sweetens and aromatizes the stew liquid.
Onions
Flavor base that adds savory aroma and sweetness as they cook.

The step that matters

Stew with high top heat and low bottom heat. Strong heat from above browns the surface while gentle heat below cooks the sweetbreads through without drying or toughening them. Too much bottom heat can scorch the bacon and vegetables before the meat is tender.

Swap the carrot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion. 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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