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Curried Sweetbreads

Curried sweetbreads simmered in gravy with optional coconut and pickled mango.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Coconut and mango match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 221 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash and soak the sweetbreads.

  2. Place them in boiling water with a little coarse sea salt and a whole onion. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads and let them cool on a drainer.

  4. Cut them into half-inch slices.

Cook in the curry

  1. Optionally, flour and lightly fry the slices in butter, or place them directly into enough curried gravy to cover them.

  2. For added flavor, include freshly grated coconut in the gravy before adding the sweetbreads.

  3. Stew the sweetbreads in the gravy gently for 20 to 30 minutes.

  4. Add lemon juice or chili vinegar to taste before serving hot.

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. Coconut + mangotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together221 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Lemon + mangotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together302 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Onion + mangotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; gentle stewing keeps the slices tender and soft in the sauce.
Curried gravy
Carries the dish's flavor and moisture, coating the slices as they stew.
Butter
Optional frying fat that browns the floured slices and adds richness.
Lemon juice or chili vinegar
Adds acidity at the end to brighten the rich, spiced gravy.

The step that matters

Stew gently. Sweetbreads are delicate, and a hard boil in the gravy can toughen the proteins and make them ragged. Keeping the gravy at a gentle simmer for the full 20 to 30 minutes keeps the slices tender and moist.

Swap the coconut

The recipe marks coconut as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, lemon, mango):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Orangefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, lemon, mango. 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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