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Braised Sweetbreads

Braised sweetbreads simmered with vegetables and stock, then baked until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Braised Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Place them in fresh cold water in a clean saucepan and bring to a boil; boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove from heat and soak again in cold water for 10 minutes.

  4. Dry sweetbreads with a clean cloth and place between two plates with a weight on top.

  5. Trim off hard gristle and lard with strips of fat bacon.

Braise

  1. In a stewpan, combine sweetbreads, shredded carrot, turnip, leek, bouquet garni, pepper, salt, and nearly 1 pint of brown stock.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Place in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  5. Baste occasionally and do not cover the stewpan.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + leektop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,310 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; the soaking, blanching and trimming prepare it to braise tender and clean.
Fat bacon
Lards the sweetbreads, adding fat and moisture as they cook slowly.
Brown stock
Braising liquid that gently cooks the sweetbreads and builds savory flavor.
Leek
Aromatic vegetable that adds savory, mildly sweet flavor to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Blanching and re-soaking the sweetbreads. Boiling briefly and then soaking in cold water firms the surface and helps draw out blood and impurities, giving a cleaner flavor and paler, neater meat. Skipping it leaves the sweetbreads tasting dark and gristly.

Swap the carrot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, leek, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Carrotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, leek, pepper. 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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