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Broiled Sweetbreads

Broiled sweetbreads are parboiled, blanched, then broiled over coals and served with butter and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Parboil sweetbreads in boiling, slightly salted water for 10 minutes.

  3. Plunge sweetbreads into ice-cold water to plump and blanch.

  4. Once cold, remove sweetbreads from water and wipe sweetbreads well.

  5. Sprinkle sweetbreads with salt if not cooking immediately.

Broil and serve

  1. Rub sweetbreads with melted butter or salad oil.

  2. Broil sweetbreads over clear coals, turning often.

  3. When half done, roll sweetbreads in melted butter or hot oil.

  4. Return sweetbreads to the fire.

  5. Serve sweetbreads dry on a hot dish or dress with butter mixed with lemon juice.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main ingredient; parboiling firms it and blanching plumps it before broiling.
Melted butter or salad oil
Adds fat that coats the surface, aiding browning and a rich flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to the butter dressing, brightening its richness at serving.

The step that matters

Rolling in butter or oil when half done. Adding fat midway keeps the surface from drying out over the coals and helps it brown evenly. Turning often also prevents scorching.

“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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