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Lambs’ Sweetbreads

A stew of lamb sweetbreads simmered with veal stock, onions, mace, butter and flour, finished with a cream and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: White pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Lambs’ Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in lukewarm water.

  2. Place the sweetbreads in a saucepan with boiling water and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads and place them in cold water.

  4. Lard the sweetbreads and place them in a stewpan.

Make the stew

  1. Add the veal stock, seasoning, onions, mace, and a thickening of butter and flour to the stewpan.

  2. Stew gently for 15-20 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the eggs with the cream.

  2. Add the minced parsley and nutmeg.

  3. Stir the mixture into the stewpan.

  4. Heat until hot but do not boil.

  5. Prepare boiled asparagus tops and add them to the sweetbreads before serving.

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. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Lamb + vealtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together568 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 stew.
Veal stock
Supplies the liquid base and savoury depth for the stew.
Butter and flour thickening
Thickens the stock into a smooth, lightly bodied sauce.
Eggs
Enrich and thicken the sauce gently when heated, adding richness and body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Heat until hot but do not boil. Once the egg and cream mixture is stirred in, boiling can curdle the eggs and make the sauce grainy. Gentle heat lets the eggs thicken it smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, veal, onion, mace, butter, flour, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, veal, onion, mace, butter, flour, egg. 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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