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Sweetbreads, Baked

Baked sweetbreads coated in egg and breadcrumbs, served with toast and 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 ↓

Sweetbreads, Baked

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 the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in warm water for 1 hour to draw out blood and improve color.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads in water for 10 minutes to firm them up.

  3. Drain the sweetbreads.

Coat and bake

  1. Brush the drained 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. Place the sweetbreads in a greased baking dish.

  6. Add a little oiled butter to the dish.

  7. Bake the sweetbreads in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Prepare 3 slices of toast.

  2. Place the baked sweetbreads on top of the toast.

  3. Pour brown gravy around the sweetbreads.

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
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender and firm when boiled and baked.
Egg
Acts as a binder that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the sweetbreads.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating during baking.
Oiled butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the coating brown and the surface stay moist.

The step that matters

Boiling the sweetbreads before coating. Boiling firms the delicate tissue so it holds its shape through breading and baking; skipping or shortening it can leave the sweetbreads fragile and prone to falling apart.

“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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