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Sweet Breads

Sweetbreads cooked with salt pork, baked, served with lemon and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Lard the sweetbreads with salt pork.

  2. Boil them in clear water for about 15 minutes.

  3. Transfer them to cold water for about 10 minutes.

Bake

  1. Place them in a pan and dredge with a little flour.

  2. Add ½ cup of hot water, a pinch of mace, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 20 minutes until browned.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For the gravy, add butter and a little flour to the pan, bring to a boil.

  2. Pour the gravy over the hot sweetbreads.

  3. Garnish the dish with sliced lemon and parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
The main protein, which becomes tender and delicate when parboiled and then baked.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour as it is larded into the sweetbreads.
Flour
Dredging helps the surface brown, and flour in the gravy thickens the pan liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, along with a toasty, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. Baking at high heat after boiling browns the floured surface and sets its flavour. Pulling the sweetbreads too early leaves them pale and under-flavoured, while overbaking can dry the delicate interior.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, flour, pepper, butter, egg, lemon, parsley. 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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