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Sweet Breads

Sweetbreads are boiled, dredged in flour, baked, and served with a butter gravy, lemon, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare

  1. Lard the sweetbreads with salt pork and boil them in clear water for about 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer them to cold water for about 10 minutes, then place them in a pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Dredge with flour, add hot water, mace, pepper, and salt, then set in the oven to brown for about 20 minutes.

  2. Dish the sweetbreads.

  3. Add butter and a little flour to the gravy; bring to a boil.

  4. Pour the gravy over the hot sweetbreads and garnish 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 (in the method)
Main protein; boiling firms it, then baking browns the outside while it stays tender inside.
Flour
Dredging coats the sweetbreads and later thickens the gravy so it clings.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the gravy, giving it smoothness and a rounded flavour.
Salt pork
Larding adds fat and savory flavor that seasons the sweetbreads from within.

The step that matters

Bringing the gravy to a boil after adding flour. Flour thickens only when it is heated in liquid, so the gravy must boil to reach full thickness. Stirring while it heats keeps lumps from forming.

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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