Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbreads A-LA-daube

Sweetbreads à la Daube is a braised sweetbread dish with veal gravy, lemon, and browning sauce, garnished with fried oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweetbreads A-LA-daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Place sweetbreads in a saucepan of boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove sweetbreads and let them cool, then lard them.

  3. Grill the larded sweetbreads in a Dutch oven.

Stew and serve

  1. In a stewpan, combine sweetbreads with veal gravy, lemon juice, and browning sauce.

  2. Stew gently for 15 minutes.

  3. Thicken the gravy with flour and butter just before serving.

  4. Transfer sweetbreads to a dish and pour the gravy over them.

  5. Garnish with fried oysters.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Sauce + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 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
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Lard
Adds fat and moisture to the sweetbreads as they are larded before cooking.
Veal gravy
Supplies the savory liquid that the sweetbreads stew in and that is served over them.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.
Browning sauce
Adds color and a deeper, roasted flavor to the gravy.
Flour and butter
Thicken the gravy so it clings to the sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Grill the larded sweetbreads in a Dutch oven. Larded sweetbreads can dry out or brown unevenly if the heat is too high or they are left too long. Gentle, even heat sets the surface and keeps the interior moist before the gentle stew.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, sauce, flour, butter, oyster. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipes