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Chevaux-de-frise with Lamb Sweetbreads

A stew of lamb sweetbreads and diced lamb brisket cooked with bacon fat, butter, parsley, onion, lemon, egg yolk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Chevaux-de-frise with Lamb Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the lamb sweetbreads and set aside.

  2. Combine the brisket dice with clear water, rinse, wipe dry, and flour them.

Make the gravy

  1. In a pot, heat the bacon fat and butter, then add chopped parsley and cook for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the lamb dice, onion, lemon juice, pepper, and salt; simmer for 2 hours.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the gravy, cooking for 3 more minutes while stirring.

Serve

  1. Plate the dish and serve with the sweetbreads on top.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb sweetbreads
Tender, rich organ meat that forms the showpiece topping for the dish.
Lamb brisket
Connective tissue breaks down during long simmering, giving the meat a tender, moist texture.
Bacon fat
Carries flavor and adds richness to the pot where the meat begins to cook.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the base of the gravy.
Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the gravy, giving it a smooth, creamy body when gently heated.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Yolks thicken through gentle heat. If the gravy is too hot or left unstirred, the eggs can scramble and turn grainy, so keep the heat low and stir constantly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter, parsley, lemon, pepper, egg. 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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