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Sweetbreads À LA Daube

A stew of sweetbreads in veal gravy with lemon and browning, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,467 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbreads À LA Daube

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads.

  2. Lard the sweetbreads.

Stew

  1. Place them in a stewpan with veal gravy, browning, and lemon juice.

  2. Stew until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter just before serving.

  2. Glaze the sweetbreads and serve with their gravy and boiled celery around the dish.

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 + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

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 centre of the dish.
Veal gravy
Supplies the liquid base for stewing and the savoury body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the sweetbreads.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and smooth texture when mixed with flour.
Lemon juice
Adds a hint of acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Stew until tender. Sweetbreads need gentle, long simmering in liquid so collagen softens and the meat becomes tender without toughening or drying out. Rushing or boiling hard leaves them firm and stringy.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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