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Larded Sweet-breads

Larded Sweetbreads are sweetbreads stuffed with a force‑meat mixture and larded with bacon fat and lemon peel, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Larded Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads as soon as you get them.

  2. Place the sweetbreads in cold water when half boiled.

Stuff and lard

  1. Mix the grated bread, lemon zest, butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and beaten egg to make a force-meat.

  2. Stuff the sweetbreads with the mixture and secure them with a skewer or kitchen twine.

  3. Lard the sweetbreads with alternating strips of bacon fat and lemon peel using a larding needle.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the sweetbreads in a Dutch oven and bake until browned.

  2. Serve with veal gravy enriched with Madeira and beaten egg yolk stirred in at the end.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; parboiling firms them so they hold their shape while stuffed and baked.
Beaten egg
Binds the force-meat so the stuffing holds together during cooking.
Bacon fat
Adds moisture and richness as it bastes the sweetbreads and helps them brown.
Grated bread
Forms the body of the force-meat and absorbs moisture for a tender stuffing.
Beaten egg yolk
Thickens the gravy and gives it a smooth, glossy, rich texture.

The step that matters

Parboiling and cooling the sweetbreads. Parboiling firms the delicate tissue so it can be stuffed and larded without tearing. Moving them to cold water when half boiled stops the cooking, keeping them tender rather than overcooked and rubbery.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, lemon, butter, pepper, egg, veal, madeira wine):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, lemon, butter, pepper, egg, veal, madeira wine. 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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