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Sweetbreads Larded, with Stewed Peas

Sweetbreads larded with fat, browned in butter, seasoned, and served with stewed peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Larded, with Stewed Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Procure 3 fresh heart sweetbreads.

  2. Lard the sweetbreads with strips of fat.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt butter in a pan and add the larded sweetbreads.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Cook until golden.

  4. Serve with stewed peas.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Nutmeg + peastop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together341 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Heart sweetbreads
Are the main protein, cooked until golden on the outside while staying tender inside.
Butter
Melts in the pan to carry heat and promote browning on the sweetbreads.
Stewed peas
Served alongside the sweetbreads as the accompanying dish.

The step that matters

Cook until golden. Sweetbreads brown best over steady, moderate heat with the pan not crowded. Browning builds flavour through the Maillard reaction, while overheating can toughen the delicate meat.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg. 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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