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Sweetbreads in Cream Sauce

A dish of sweetbreads simmered in milk and herbs, thickened with corn flour and finished with parsley and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweetbreads in Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water with salt for 10 minutes.

  2. Press the sweetbreads with a heavy weight.

  3. Trim the sweetbreads when cold.

Simmer

  1. Simmer the sweetbreads in milk until covered.

  2. Add the carrot, onion, and bouquet of herbs to the pot.

  3. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix the corn flour with a little milk until smooth.

  2. Add the hot milk from the sweetbreads to the mixture.

  3. Stir the mixture into the stewpan and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Dish the sweetbreads and add parsley and lemon juice to the sauce.

  5. Pour the sauce over the sweetbreads.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together794 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 is the main component of the dish.
Milk
Gently cooks the sweetbreads and forms the base of the cream sauce.
Corn flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the sweetbreads.
Onion
Adds savory aroma to the milk as it simmers.
Carrot
Adds gentle sweetness and aroma to the simmering milk.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Corn flour must be whisked smooth in cold milk before adding the hot milk, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens as it heats, so the sauce needs steady stirring while it cooks to become smooth and glossy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, carrot, corn, flour, lemon, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, carrot, corn, flour, lemon, parsley. 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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