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Broiled Sweetbreads

Broiled sweetbreads are boiled, cleaned, split, broiled, and served with lemon and toast points.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,334 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Place them in boiling salted water with 1 teaspoon of vinegar and cook for 25 minutes without boiling.

  3. Transfer to cold water and carefully remove all traces of the pith and membranes.

Broil and serve

  1. Split the sweetbreads and place them in a fine wire broiler.

  2. Broil until brown and serve with lemon and toast points.

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. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Throat sweetbreads
Are the main ingredient; their delicate tender texture is the focus of the dish.
Vinegar
Added to the cooking water, it helps keep the sweetbreads pale and firm while they poach.

The step that matters

Cooking without boiling. Holding the water just below a boil keeps the sweetbreads tender and prevents the outer surface from toughening and breaking apart. A rolling boil makes the proteins seize and the texture tough.

“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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