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Veal Sweetbreads

Veal sweetbreads fried in butter and served with a cream‑parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Scald the sweetbreads in salt water and remove the stringy parts.

  2. Soak in cold water for a few minutes, then dry with a cloth.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip in the egg yolk, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in butter until brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a pan, heat the cream with parsley, pepper, salt, and flour until boiling.

  2. Pour the sauce over the sweetbreads and serve hot.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

Veal sweetbreads
Main protein; they become tender when scalded and then browned in butter.
Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the sweetbreads.
Cream
Forms the rich sauce base and adds moisture and richness.
Flour
Thickens the cream sauce as it heats to boiling.

The step that matters

Frying in butter until brown. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness, so drying the sweetbreads well before coating and frying helps the crust brown rather than steam.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, cream, pepper, 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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