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To Stew Sweetbreads, Bis De Veatx

A stew of sweetbreads with veal, bacon, herbs, and broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 ↓

To Stew Sweetbreads, Bis De Veatx

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Make a forcemeat by mixing the tender parts of fowl, bacon, parsley, thyme, lemon peel, egg yolks, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg.

Stew

  1. Lay the sweetbreads in a pan on a layer of veal slices.

  2. Cover with bacon slices, add sweet herbs, sliced onion, mace, pepper, and salt.

  3. Pour in the broth and stew for 2 hours.

Reduce and serve

  1. Remove the sweetbreads and reduce the broth by boiling until it thickens to a fourth of its original volume.

  2. Heat the sweetbreads in the reduced broth and garnish with lemon slices.

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

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 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

Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and help it set when cooked, giving it a firm, cohesive texture.
Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that is the central ingredient of the stew.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the meat and broth as it stews.
Broth
Forms the cooking liquid, which reduces to a concentrated sauce that coats the meat.

The step that matters

Reducing the broth. Boiling the broth until it thickens to a fourth of its volume concentrates its flavor and gelatin. If it is reduced too little the sauce stays thin, and if it is boiled too hard or too long it can turn overly salty and sticky.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, lemon, egg, pepper, nutmeg, veal. 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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