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Sweet Breads

A dish of sweetbreads fried in butter and served with a cream sauce and optional mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

  1. Scald the sweetbreads in salted water and remove the stringy parts.

  2. Soak in cold water for a few minutes, then dry with a towel.

  3. Dip in beaten egg and coat with bread crumbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry in butter until browned, then place on a hot dish.

  2. In the same pan, combine heavy cream, black pepper, coarse sea salt, and chopped parsley.

  3. Add flour to the mixture and bring to a boil.

  4. Pour the sauce over the sweetbreads and add mushrooms if desired.

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 + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 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
Main protein; the dish's central ingredient that is cooked and served.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, browned coating when fried in butter.
Egg
Beaten egg helps the bread crumbs adhere to the sweetbreads.
Heavy cream
Forms the richness and body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream sauce as it comes to a boil.

The step that matters

Removing the stringy parts after scalding. Sweetbreads contain connective tissue and membranes that stay tough and chewy if left in, so they must be trimmed away carefully while the meat is still warm and easy to handle.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

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

More sweetbread recipes

Salad 73Croquettes 61Fried 37Fricassee 27Broiled 19Pie 19 See all 37 →

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