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Sweetbreads and Bacon

Skewered sweetbread cubes with bacon, fried and served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,013 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sweetbreads and Bacon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut prepared sweetbreads into ½ inch cubes.

  2. Roll the cubes in bread crumbs, then dip in beaten egg, and roll in crumbs again.

Assemble and fry

  1. Skewer one cube of sweetbread, followed by a slice of bacon, repeating twice more for a total of three pieces on each skewer.

  2. Fry the skewers in hot cottolene until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on the skewers with tomato sauce No. 2.

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. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + tomatotop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, mild meat that forms the main body of each skewer.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the crumbs adhere to the sweetbread cubes.
Bacon
Adds salty, smoky fat that flavors the sweetbread as it cooks.
Cottolene
Conducts heat for frying, browning the crumb coating evenly.

The step that matters

Fry the skewers in hot cottolene until golden brown. Oil that is hot enough sets the egg and crumb coating quickly, so it crisps rather than absorbing grease and falling apart. Too cool an oil makes the coating soggy and greasy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, sauce. 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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