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Lamb's Sweetbreads

A stew of lamb sweetbreads simmered with broth, onions, mace, and finished with a cream‑egg sauce and asparagus tops.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb's Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Blanch the lamb's sweetbreads and soak them in cold water for a short time.

Make the stew

  1. Place them in a stew-pan with a ladleful of broth, pepper, coarse sea salt, small onions, and a blade of mace.

  2. Stir in a bit of butter and flour.

  3. Stew for half an hour.

  4. Add boiled asparagus-tops to the stew.

Finish with the egg mixture

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs with cream, minced parsley, and a few grates of nutmeg.

  2. Pour in the egg mixture.

  3. Heat gently without boiling.

  4. Stir continuously to prevent curdling.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Lamb's sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Eggs
Thicken the cream mixture into a smooth, lightly set sauce when gently heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the egg sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and with flour helps form a base that thickens the stew.
Flour
Thickens the stew liquid, giving it body together with the butter.
Broth
Forms the savoury cooking liquid that the sweetbreads and vegetables stew in.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Eggs thickened with cream can curdle or turn grainy if they get too hot. Gentle heat and constant stirring let the proteins set slowly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, onion, butter, flour, egg, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, onion, butter, flour, egg, cream. 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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