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Broiled Sweetbreads

Broiled sweetbreads seasoned with salt and pepper, basted with olive oil or butter, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,263 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Trim off all fat and place in boiling water with 1 teaspoon of salt.

  3. Parboil for 15 minutes over moderate heat.

  4. Transfer to cold water for 5 minutes, then remove all skin, membrane, and rough parts.

  5. Cut the sweetbreads into slices and refrigerate until ready to cook.

Cook and serve

  1. Season the slices with salt and pepper, and baste with a little olive oil or butter.

  2. Broil until golden brown 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. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein, which is parboiled, cleaned, and then broiled until browned.
Olive oil or butter
Basting fat that helps the slices brown and stay moist under the broiler.

The step that matters

Parboiling and cleaning the sweetbreads. Parboiling firms the tissue so it can be trimmed cleanly, and removing the skin and membrane prevents toughness and chewy bits. Cooking too long or too hot can make the sweetbreads tough and dry.

“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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