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Sweetbreads, Baked

Baked sweetbreads coated in beaten egg and bread crumbs, served on hot toast with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in water for 2 hours, changing the water once or twice.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads in water for 5 minutes until firm but not hard.

  3. Drain and cool the sweetbreads in cold water.

Bread and bake

  1. Brush the sweetbreads with beaten egg, roll in bread crumbs, and sprinkle with clarified butter.

  2. Bread crumb them again and place in a baking dish with 2 ounces of butter.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C), basting until browned, for 30 to 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the sweetbreads on hot toast with brown gravy around them.

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 when simmered and then baked.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the sweetbreads.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the coating brown evenly in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the sweetbreads until firm but not hard. Boiling firms the sweetbread so it holds its shape through breading and baking. Overcooking toughens the protein and makes the texture rubbery and dry.

“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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