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Sweet-breads

Sweetbreads are prepared by soaking, blanching, slicing, and cooking in various ways such as broiling, fricassee, creamy sauce, or frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in lukewarm water for 30 minutes.

  2. Blanch sweetbreads in boiling water.

  3. Cool sweetbreads in cold water.

  4. Remove the outer casing and little pipes from sweetbreads.

  5. Slice sweetbreads thinly.

  6. Spread butter on sweetbreads.

  7. Broil sweetbreads over hot coals, turning often.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt butter.

  2. Stir in flour.

  3. Add soup stock or water.

  4. Add sweetbread pieces to the gravy.

  5. Season the gravy and boil once.

  6. Simmer fresh sweetbreads in gravy for 45 minutes.

  7. Add beaten egg, cream, and parsley.

Parboil and fry

  1. Parboil sweetbreads for 5 minutes.

  2. Dry sweetbreads.

  3. Lard sweetbreads with pork.

  4. Fry sweetbreads in a hot pan until crisp.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 (in the method)
Main protein; cooking firms and browns the meat while keeping it tender inside.
Butter
Adds richness and fat for browning the sweetbreads and flavouring the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth gravy as it cooks in the butter.
Egg
Enriches and thickens the gravy when stirred in at the end.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky body to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Dry sweetbreads before frying. Surface moisture turns to steam in a hot pan, which stops the sweetbreads from browning and getting crisp. Patting them dry lets the surface brown and crisp properly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, flour, pepper, egg, cream, pork. 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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