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Broiled Sweetbreads

Broiled sweetbreads are cooked in boiling water, then broiled with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skin and fat from sweetbreads and soak in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Place sweetbreads in a pot and cover with boiling water and add salt.

  3. Boil for 30 minutes or until cooked through.

  4. Drain the water and cover with cold water.

  5. Let sit for 10-15 minutes.

  6. Wipe dry and split sweetbreads lengthwise.

Broil and serve

  1. Rub with warm butter.

  2. Broil over bright coals until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Season with butter, pepper, and additional salt if needed.

  4. Serve on hot plates.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; boiling firms the flesh so it holds its shape when split and broiled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown evenly under the heat.

The step that matters

Broil over bright coals until golden brown on both sides. Sweetbreads are already cooked, so the broiling is only for browning. High direct heat browns the surface quickly, while too long over the coals dries the meat out.

“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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