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Sweetbreads Larded, a LA Dadbe

Sweetbreads larded with bacon, stewed in veal broth with lemon and browned, thickened with flour and butter, served with boiled celery.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Larded, a LA Dadbe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads and lard them with bacon.

Stew and finish

  1. Place them in a stewpan with 1 pint of veal broth. Add a little browning and the juice of ½ lemon. Stew until tender.

  2. Thicken the gravy with a little flour and butter.

  3. Serve with boiled celery arranged around the dish.

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. Lemon + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 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
Tender meat that is the main body of the dish, cooked gently until soft.
Bacon
Fat larded through the sweetbreads, adding moisture and savoury flavour as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the sweetbreads rather than running thin.
Butter
Enriches the gravy with fat, adding richness and smoothness when mixed with the flour.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, 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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