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Broiled Sweetbreads

Broiled sweetbreads seasoned with salt and pepper, buttered, and garnished with parsley and peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and broil

  1. Split sweetbreads lengthwise and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  2. Place on a greased wire broiler and broil over coals, or place in a pan and broil under the gas.

  3. Spread with soft butter and sprinkle with more coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Garnish with parsley and serve with a border of peas.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + peastop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; its delicate texture is what the broiling sets and browns.
Soft butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown and taste rounded.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and mild heat to the seasoned surface.

The step that matters

Broiling the sweetbreads. Sweetbreads need enough heat to brown the outside while the inside stays tender. Too little heat leaves them pale and watery, and too much dries or toughens the surface before the center is cooked.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Black-eyed peafits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, parsley. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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