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Sweet-breads

Sweetbread is parboiled, sliced, breaded, fried, and served with a gravy made from butter, flour, and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet-breads

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash sweetbreads in salted water and remove stringy parts.

  2. Parboil for 15 minutes, then slice in half.

Fry

  1. Dip in egg and roll in bread or cracker crumbs.

  2. Season and fry in hot lard until golden.

Make the gravy

  1. For cooked sweetbreads, cut into small pieces and stew in soup stock or water for 10 minutes.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, add butter, and thicken gravy with flour.

  3. For fresh sweetbreads, slice thinly and cook in water or soup stock for 30 minutes.

  4. Make gravy as before, adding cream and a well-beaten egg if desired.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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
Are the main protein; their tender texture is the centre of the dish.
Egg
Binds the crumb coating so it adheres to the sweetbreads before frying.
Bread or cracker crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned coating when fried.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks with the stock or water.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. Lard must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If the fat is too cool, the coating soaks up oil and turns greasy before it crisps, and the sweetbreads may overcook inside.

“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 →

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