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Baked Sweetbreads

Breaded sweetbreads baked with butter, served on toast with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in warm water for over an hour to improve their color.

  2. Simmer the sweetbreads in boiling water for about 10 minutes until firm.

  3. Drain the sweetbreads.

Coat and bake

  1. Brush the sweetbreads with beaten egg.

  2. Coat the sweetbreads with bread crumbs.

  3. Dip the sweetbreads in beaten egg again.

  4. Coat the sweetbreads with more bread crumbs.

  5. Drizzle the sweetbreads with oiled butter.

  6. Bake the sweetbreads in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the sweetbreads on toast.

  2. Pour brown gravy around them.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein; simmering firms its texture so it holds its shape when coated and baked.
Egg
Beaten egg acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the sweetbreads.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.
Oiled butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the crust brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Simmer the sweetbreads until firm. Simmering in boiling water firms the tissue before coating. If it is undercooked, the sweetbreads stay soft and can fall apart when dipped and baked.

“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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