Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbreads a LA Dauphine

Sweetbreads à la Dauphine is a braised sweetbread dish cooked with bacon, carrots, onions, and glazed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Carrot and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 21,601 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweetbreads a LA Dauphine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Trim the fat and sinews from the sweetbreads and blanch them in warm water.

  2. Parboil the sweetbreads, then let them cool and lard them.

Stew

  1. Grease a stew pan with fresh butter and add sliced carrots and onions.

  2. Layer slices of fat bacon in the pan, then place the sweetbreads on top and sprinkle with coarse sea salt.

  3. Stew the sweetbreads with high heat on top and low heat beneath for 45 minutes until browned.

  4. Cover with a round piece of buttered paper and reduce the top heat.

Glaze and serve

  1. Drain the sweetbreads and place them in a pan with glaze and bacon underneath.

  2. Keep in the glaze until serving, then drain again, glaze to a fine brown, and serve with sorrel or endive.

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. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + carrottop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,083 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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and rich when parboiled and stewed.
Fresh butter
Greases the pan and adds richness and flavour to the stewing base.
Fat bacon
Lines the pan and adds savoury fat that flavours the sweetbreads as they stew.
Sliced carrots
Sweetness and aroma that season the stewing liquid and base of the dish.
Sliced onions
Aroma and savoury depth that build flavour during the long stew.
Glaze
Gives a glossy, browned surface and concentrated savoury flavour at the finish.

The step that matters

Stewing with high heat on top and low heat beneath. Uneven heat can scorch the bottom or leave the top pale. Gentle heat from below keeps the sweetbreads moist while the top browns, so the browning is even and the meat stays tender.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion. 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

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes