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Broiled Sweetbreads

Broiled sweetbreads are organ meats blanched, buttered, and broiled over coals, served with lemon‑butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Parboil in boiling, slightly salted water for 10 minutes.

  3. Plunge into ice-cold water to plump and blanch.

  4. When cold, remove from water, wipe well, and sprinkle with salt if not cooking immediately.

  5. Rub sweetbreads with melted butter or salad oil.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil over clear coals, turning often.

  2. When half done, roll in melted butter or hot oil and return to the fire.

  3. Serve dry on a hot dish or dress with butter mixed with lemon juice.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein; soaking and parboiling firm and clean it before broiling.
Melted butter or salad oil
Fat that coats the surface, promoting even browning and keeping the meat from drying out.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to the butter dressing, brightening the rich flavor of the sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Broil over clear coals, turning often. Frequent turning and fat basting help the surface brown evenly without scorching or drying, since sweetbreads are delicate and lean on the outside once blanched.

“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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