Skip to main content
Main

To Prepare Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads are soaked, boiled, and cleaned to remove veins and fibers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

To Prepare Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sweetbreads in clear cold water and vinegar for 1 hour to draw out the blood.

  2. Put sweetbreads into fresh cold water and add salt.

Cook

  1. Heat gradually.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain.

  4. Place in cold water.

Clean

  1. Once thoroughly cold, remove all veins, strings, and fibers without breaking the sweetbreads.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender main protein that becomes creamy and delicate when gently cooked.
Vinegar
Adds a mild acidity that helps draw blood out of the sweetbreads during soaking.

The step that matters

Heat gradually. Bringing the sweetbreads up to heat slowly keeps the delicate tissue from toughening or breaking apart. Rapid heating can seize the proteins and make the texture firm and rubbery.

“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.

More sweetbread recipes

Salad 73Croquettes 61Fried 37Fricassee 27Broiled 19Pie 19 See all 37 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes