Skip to main content
Main

Roasted Sweet-breads

Roasted sweetbreads coated in egg and cracker crumbs, served with a parsley‑flour‑lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Roasted Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads, then place them in cold water to harden.

  2. Wipe them perfectly dry and lay them in a dripping pan.

Roast and coat

  1. Roast while basting with a mixture of butter and hot water until they begin to brown.

  2. Remove the sweetbreads from the oven briefly.

  3. Roll the sweetbreads in beaten egg.

  4. Roll the sweetbreads in cracker crumbs.

  5. Return the sweetbreads to the oven for 10 minutes.

  6. Baste the sweetbreads with butter.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a chafing dish, add ½ cup hot water, chopped parsley, browned flour, and lemon juice to the drippings.

  2. Pour this mixture over the sweetbreads before serving.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
The main protein; parboiling and hardening firm up the meat before roasting.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown while basting.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the outside of the sweetbreads.
Egg
Beaten egg acts as a binder so the cracker crumbs stick to the sweetbreads.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan drippings into a sauce and adds a toasted flavor.

The step that matters

Wiping the sweetbreads perfectly dry before roasting. Surface moisture steams the meat instead of letting it brown, and it also stops the egg and cracker crumbs from adhering evenly. Dry surfaces allow the crust to form properly.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes