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Sweetbreads Stewed

Sweetbreads stuffed with forcemeat, bacon and seasonings, then stewed in broth and reduced to a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 skewers and place them in a pan with slices of veal 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 1 quart of broth and stew gently for 2 hours.

Reduce and serve

  1. Remove the sweetbreads, strain and skim the broth, and boil it down to ½ pint.

  2. Warm the sweetbreads in the reduced broth and 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
Are the main meat, becoming tender and moist through slow gentle stewing.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat stuffing so it holds together during cooking.
Forcemeat of fowl
Forms the stuffing, adding body and a soft, rich texture inside the sweetbreads.
Fat and lean bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the stuffing and the braising liquid.
1 quart broth
Forms the stewing liquid that cooks the sweetbreads and becomes the sauce when reduced.

The step that matters

Stew gently over low heat. Sweetbreads are delicate and can toughen or fall apart if the liquid boils hard. Gentle, steady heat keeps the meat tender and moist for the full two hours.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (anchovy, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, thyme, egg, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against anchovy, nutmeg, lemon, parsley, thyme, egg, 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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