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Spiced Sweet Breads

A savory dish of sweetbreads simmered with spices, stock, and sherry, served on toast or in shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Spiced Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in clear water, then boil them with vinegar, salt, and cayenne pepper until tender.

  2. Transfer them to ice water to cool.

  3. Slice the sweetbreads in half.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, bring stock to a boil with onions and spices.

  2. Stir in browned flour, butter, and parsley.

Finish and serve

  1. Once the flour is cooked, add sliced sweetbreads, hard boiled eggs, sherry, and finely sliced lemon.

  2. Serve on toast or in shells.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Allspice + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,083 recipes

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

  5. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main meat, which becomes tender after boiling and cooling.
Browned flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce once cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a firm, rich texture to the dish.
Sherry
Adds aroma and a mild sweetness to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that cuts through the richness.

The step that matters

Cook the browned flour fully before adding the meats. Flour must be cooked in the hot stock so it thickens smoothly and loses its raw starchy taste. Adding the sweetbreads and other ingredients too early can leave the sauce tasting floury or lumpy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, clove, allspice, flour, sherry, parsley, vinegar):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Limefits about as well
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, clove, allspice, flour, sherry, parsley, vinegar. 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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