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Boasted Sweetbreads

A dish of boiled sweetbreads coated in egg and breadcrumbs, baked and served on toasted bread with a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boasted Sweetbreads

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 lukewarm water for 3 to 4 hours to remove impurities.

  2. Pour boiling water over the sweetbreads and let them sit for 2 to 3 minutes.

Poach

  1. Place the sweetbreads in a stew pan with carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and mace.

  2. Cover with a little water or soup stock and boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads from the pan and dry them on a cloth.

Coat and brown

  1. Dip them in egg, then roll them in bread crumbs.

  2. Brown the sweetbreads in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Strain the cooking liquid and add a little cream.

  2. Serve the sweetbreads on toasted bread and pour the sauce over the toast.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 the centerpiece of the dish.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the sweetbreads so the coating holds during browning.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the strained cooking liquid sauce.

The step that matters

Drying before coating. Moisture on the sweetbreads keeps the egg and bread crumbs from adhering evenly and steams the coating instead of letting it brown and crisp.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, egg, bread, cream):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, egg, bread, cream. 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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