Skip to main content
Main

Lamb’s Sweetbreads

A stew of lamb sweetbreads simmered with broth, onions, mace, butter, flour, and finished with a cream and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 sweetbreads.

  2. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for a while.

Make the stew

  1. In a stewpan, combine the sweetbreads, broth, pepper, salt, onions, and mace.

  2. Stir in the butter and flour.

  3. Stew the mixture for 30 minutes.

  4. Add boiled asparagus tops to the stew.

Finish with the egg mixture

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with cream, parsley, and nutmeg.

  2. Gently stir in the egg mixture without boiling.

  3. Heat through while stirring continuously to prevent curdling.

  4. Optionally, add boiled young French beans or peas for color.

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 body of the stew.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy texture when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce and helping it stay smooth.
Flour
Thickens the broth with butter so the stew has body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor into the flour-thickened base.

The step that matters

Heat through without boiling after adding the egg mixture. Egg yolks begin to set around simmering temperature and will curdle if the stew boils. Stirring continuously while heating gently keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

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.

You might also like

Asparagus SoupAsparagus Soup179 recipesAsparagus SaladAsparagus Salad77 recipesCream of AsparagusCream of Asparagus38 recipesBoiled AsparagusBoiled Asparagus27 recipes