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Lamb Sweetbreads Stewed

Stewed lamb sweetbreads simmered in stock, thickened with flour and butter, finished with lemon juice and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb Sweetbreads Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in warm water for 1 hour.

  2. Parboil the sweetbreads for 20 minutes.

  3. Transfer the sweetbreads to cold water for 10 minutes to whiten.

Make the stew

  1. Place the sweetbreads in a stew pan with 1 pint of stock and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the sweetbreads from the pan.

  3. Thicken the gravy by adding flour mixed with butter.

  4. Bring the gravy to a boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice, sweet cream, salt, and white pepper to the gravy.

  2. Heat the sauce until hot but do not boil.

  3. Pour the sauce over the sweetbreads and serve.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 forms the body of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the gravy into a smooth, lightly bound sauce when cooked with butter.
Butter
Adds richness and helps flour thicken the gravy smoothly.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a silky, smooth texture to the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and gravy.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce until hot but do not boil. Once cream is added, boiling can cause it to separate and turn grainy, so the sauce should be kept hot but gently warmed rather than brought to a rolling boil.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, lemon, cream. 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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