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Fricassee of Sweetbreads

A sautéed sweetbread dish flavored with herbs, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Fricassee of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for a few hours.

  2. Blanch them in boiling water for 5 minutes, then cool and remove the membranes.

Cook and finish

  1. Melt butter in a pan and sauté the sweetbreads until golden.

  2. Add chopped herbs, salt, and pepper to taste.

  3. Finish with a splash of lemon juice before serving.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Sweetbreads
Main protein; the soaking and blanching firm and clean them before browning.
Butter
Fat that carries heat and browns the sweetbreads, adding richness to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Acidity that brightens the rich butter and balances the finished dish.

The step that matters

Sautéing the sweetbreads until golden. Browning needs a hot pan and dry surfaces; overcrowding or moisture causes steaming instead, leaving pale, soft sweetbreads without the desired crust and flavour.

“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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