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Sweetbreads Stewed

Sweetbreads are blanched, stuffed with forcemeat and spices, then stewed with veal slices, bacon, onion, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 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 with splinter skewers and place them in a pan with veal slices on top and bacon underneath.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, mace, cloves, herbs, and sliced onion.

Stew

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

  2. Add the broth.

  3. Stew gently for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the sweetbreads.

Reduce and serve

  1. Strain and skim the broth.

  2. Boil the broth down to ½ pint.

  3. Warm the sweetbreads in the reduced broth.

  4. Serve with 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. 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
Form the main meat, which turns tender and rich during slow stewing.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat stuffing so it holds together during cooking.
Veal slices
Add meaty flavour and body to the broth as they stew.
Broth
Provides the cooking liquid, which is reduced to a concentrated sauce.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 1 hour. Simmering gently keeps the sweetbreads tender and the broth clear; a hard boil toughens the meat and clouds the liquid.

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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