Name: Larded Sweetbreads Stewed
Ingredients: 3 fine sweetbreads; ½ pound fat salt pork, cut into long narrow strips; 1 cup good veal gravy; a small pinch of cayenne pepper; 2 tablespoons mushroom catsup; juice of half a lemon; coarse sea salt (to taste)

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Sweetbreads Stewed

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

3 fine sweetbreads
½ pound fat salt pork, cut into long narrow strips
1 cup good veal gravy
a small pinch of cayenne pepper
2 tablespoons mushroom catsup
juice of half a lemon
coarse sea salt (to taste)

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

Parboil the sweetbreads in boiling water for five minutes.
Plunge them immediately into very cold salt water for five minutes.
Wipe them dry with a soft, clean cloth and let them cool on a dish.
Lard the sweetbreads closely with the strips of salt pork.

Stew and serve

Stew gently in the gravy for twenty-five minutes.
Add lemon juice, catsup, cayenne, and salt if needed.
Arrange the sweetbreads on a flat dish, pour the gravy over them, and garnish with sliced lemon and fried toast.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pork + mushroomtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-propylphenol (allspice, anise).
Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,930 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads: Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the body of the dish.
Salt pork: Adds fat that bastes the sweetbreads and keeps them moist as they stew.
Veal gravy: Supplies the liquid for stewing, carrying savory flavour into the meat.
Mushroom catsup: Adds concentrated savoury, umami depth to the gravy.
Lemon juice: Brightens the rich gravy with acidity that balances its fattiness.

The step that matters

Parboil, then chill and dry the sweetbreads. Parboiling firms the meat and cold water stops the cooking, so the sweetbreads hold their shape. Drying them well lets the larding pork stick and keeps the gravy from thinning.

“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.

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

Pork Cake107 recipes

Roast Pork82 recipes

Mushroom Soup60 recipes

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Larded Sweetbreads Stewed