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Sweet Bread a LA Bigarade

A baked sweetbread dish served with a brown sauce, sherry, and citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Sweet Bread a LA Bigarade

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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Lard the sweetbreads and brush them with the beaten egg.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and place on a baking tin with the butter.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes, basting frequently.

Make the bigarade sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the brown sauce, sherry, extract of meat, sugar, lemon juice, and orange juice.

  2. Reduce the sauce by one-fourth, strain through a tammy cloth, and add the chopped orange rind.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil before serving.

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. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 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
Main protein; the tender, delicate meat that the crumb coating and sauce accompany.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the surface so the coating holds during baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned coating on the outside of the sweetbreads.
Butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and richness on the baking tin.
Brown sauce
Provides the savoury, rich body of the sauce base.
Orange juice
Adds bright acidity and fruity flavour that defines the bigarade sauce.

The step that matters

Reducing the sauce by one-fourth. Reduction concentrates flavour and thickens the sauce by evaporating water. Under-reducing leaves it thin and dilute, while over-reducing can make it too salty or sticky once the meat extract and sugar concentrate.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, butter, sauce, sherry, meat, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, sauce, sherry, meat, sugar. 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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