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Stewed Sweetbread

A dish of sweetbread stewed in stock, thickened with arrowroot and finished with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Stewed Sweetbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbread

  1. Soak the sweetbread in cold water with a little salt for 1 hour.

  2. Then blanch it.

  3. Lift the sweetbread into a bowl of cold water and remove any fat or gristle with your fingers.

Stew

  1. Tie the sweetbread in a piece of muslin, place it in a stewpan, and cover with hot stock or milk.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 hour until tender.

  3. Then lift onto a square of toast and keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the arrowroot with a little cold stock to form a smooth paste.

  2. Strain the paste into the stock in the pan.

  3. Bring to a boil and cook for 4 to 5 minutes.

  4. Add the cream, season to taste, and pour the sauce over the sweetbread.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together553 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Its delicate, tender texture is the main element that the gentle stewing keeps soft.
Arrowroot
Starch that thickens the stock into a smooth, glossy sauce when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished sauce.
White stock or milk
Liquid that gently cooks the sweetbread and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be mixed into a smooth paste with cold liquid before it goes into the hot stock, otherwise it clumps. Boiling for the stated 4 to 5 minutes lets the starch thicken fully and gives a clear, glossy sauce.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cream, pepper, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, pepper, lemon. 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.

More stewed sweetbread recipes

with Mushrooms 3 See all 17 →

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