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Sweetbreads, Another Way to Dress

Breaded sweetbreads baked with gravy and sherry, served with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, Another Way to Dress

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads in water until firm, about 10 minutes.

  3. Remove and drain the sweetbreads in a cloth.

Bread and brown

  1. Brush the sweetbreads with egg and sprinkle with bread-crumbs.

  2. Brown them in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or in front of the fire.

Serve

  1. Prepare the gravy and stir in the sherry.

  2. Serve the sweetbreads with the gravy poured underneath and garnish with watercress.

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

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

  2. Bread + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Egg + sherrytop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein; boiling firms them so they hold their shape while browning.
Egg
Acts as a glue so the bread-crumbs adhere to the sweetbreads.
Bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when baked or grilled.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury richness to the dry, browned coating.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the gravy.

The step that matters

Boil until firm. Boiling sets the sweetbreads so they hold their shape during browning. Undercooking leaves them soft and prone to breaking apart, while overcooking makes them dry and rubbery.

“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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