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Sweetbreads, Braised

Braised sweetbreads cooked with vegetables, stock, and gravy, served on fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads (see instructions for blanching sweetbreads).

  2. Slice the onion, carrot, turnip, and celery.

  3. In a stewpan, combine the sliced vegetables, bouquet garni, and peppercorns.

  4. Nearly cover the vegetables with stock, adding more as needed.

Braise

  1. Wrap the sweetbreads in buttered paper.

  2. Place the wrapped sweetbreads on top of the vegetables.

  3. Cover the stewpan and cook gently for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Fry the block of bread in hot fat until golden.

  2. Drain the fried bread well.

  3. Place the cooked sweetbreads on top of the fried bread.

  4. Brush the sweetbreads with glaze.

  5. Pour the gravy or tomato sauce around them.

  6. Garnish with green peas, haricots verts, or a mix of vegetables if desired.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's sweetbreads
Gentle braising turns them tender and moist, with a delicate, creamy texture.
Stock
Provides the moist cooking liquid that braises the sweetbreads and carries flavour from the vegetables.
Onion, carrot, turnip, and celery
Aromatic vegetables that flavour the stock and cushion the sweetbreads above the liquid.
Fried bread
Crisp base that soaks up juices and gives the dish a contrasting texture.
Gravy or tomato sauce
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Cook the sweetbreads gently. Sweetbreads are delicate. High heat or a rolling boil tightens and toughens their proteins, making them firm and rubbery, so keep the liquid at a gentle simmer for the full braising time.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, bread, tomato):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme, bread, tomato. 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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