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Sweetbreads D LA Daube

Sweetbreads cooked in a stew of veal gravy, lemon juice, and brown sauce, finished with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweetbreads D LA Daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil sweetbreads in water for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove sweetbreads from the boiling water.

  3. Let the sweetbreads cool.

  4. Lard the sweetbreads with bacon pieces.

Stew

  1. Place the sweetbreads in a stewpan with veal gravy, lemon juice, and browning.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Thicken the stew with flour and butter.

Serve

  1. Serve the sweetbreads with gravy poured over and garnish with boiled celery or oyster patties.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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.
Bacon
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it melts into the sweetbreads during stewing.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury base that the sweetbreads stew in.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances its fattiness.
Flour
Thickens the stewing liquid into a smooth gravy with body.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour into a smooth, glossy thickened gravy.

The step that matters

Cooling before larding. Sweetbreads must cool enough to handle before bacon is pushed into them, so they hold their shape and the lardoons are not pulled out or the meat torn. Gentle stewing afterward keeps the delicate sweetbread tender rather than tough.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, flour, butter. 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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