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Sweet-breads, Fried

Fried sweetbreads cooked in butter, served with a spiced gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet-breads, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sweetbreads in cold water and place them in a stew pan with enough cold salted water to cover them.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, skim off any foam, then add the bay leaf and mace.

  3. Boil the sweetbreads for 30 minutes if large, or 40 minutes if very large.

  4. Remove the sweetbreads and reserve the boiling water for the gravy.

  5. Trim the sweetbreads, season with salt and pepper, and dredge with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat a large spoonful of fresh butter until hot enough to brown.

  2. Add the sweetbreads to the pan, cover, and fry until light brown, basting occasionally for 30 minutes.

  3. After cooking, add some of the reserved spiced water to the gravy, boil for 1 minute, stir well, and pour over 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

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Mace + buttertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 browned.
Flour
Coats the sweetbreads so they brown evenly and develop a light crust in the butter.
Fresh butter
Conducts heat for frying and browns the flour coating, adding richness and flavour.

The step that matters

Frying with cover and basting. Frying covered keeps the sweetbreads moist, while basting spreads butter over the surface. Too little heat or too much cover can leave the coating pale or soft, so the sweetbreads need light, steady browning.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter. 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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