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Ragout of Sweetbreads

A savory ragout made with sweetbreads, carrots, onions, veal parings, parsley, and a sauce thickened with egg yolks and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Ragout of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in fresh water to remove blood, then blanch them.

  2. In a stew pan, combine carrots, onions, veal parings, parsley, and young onions.

  3. Add the sweetbreads and cover with a slice of bacon.

  4. Moisten with bouillon, ensuring they do not swim in liquid.

  5. Cover with buttered paper and boil.

Braise and finish

  1. Place under a furnace with heat above and below.

  2. Monitor to prevent overcooking; remove when done.

  3. If no sauce remains, strain the cooking liquid.

  4. Mix butter with flour and add mushrooms.

  5. Cook and skim.

  6. Add artichoke bottoms and sliced sweetbreads, ensuring they do not boil.

  7. Before serving, thicken the sauce with egg yolks, minced parsley, lemon or verjuice, and a little butter.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Carrot + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,351 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
Main protein; become tender and delicate when gently cooked and not boiled hard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce into a smooth, creamy consistency as they gently set with heat.
Butter
Adds richness and body, and combines with flour to thicken the sauce.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter into a roux.
Lemon or verjuice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fattiness.
Bouillon
Supplies savory flavor and moisture to the braising liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the sauce from boiling after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks scramble and curdle when overheated, so the sauce must be thickened gently off the boil to stay smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, veal, parsley, butter, egg, lemon):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, veal, parsley, butter, egg, lemon. 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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