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Baked Sweetbreads

Baked sweetbreads coated in egg and breadcrumbs, baked, served on toast with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Choose large, white sweetbreads and soak them in warm water for over an hour to draw out blood and improve color.

  2. Put the sweetbreads in boiling water and simmer for about 10 minutes until firm.

  3. Drain the sweetbreads.

Coat and bake

  1. Brush the sweetbreads with egg.

  2. Sprinkle the sweetbreads with bread crumbs.

  3. Dip the sweetbreads in egg again.

  4. Coat the sweetbreads with more bread crumbs.

  5. Add a little oiled butter on top.

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

Serve

  1. Prepare 3 slices of toast.

  2. Place the sweetbreads on top of the toast.

  3. 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
Main protein; simmering firms them so they hold their shape while coating and baking.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the sweetbreads.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.
Oiled butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and richness on the coated surface.

The step that matters

Soaking the sweetbreads. Soaking in warm water for over an hour draws out blood, which otherwise darkens the color and can give an off flavor. Skipping or shortening this soak leaves the sweetbreads dull and less clean-tasting.

“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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