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Baked Sweetbreads

Baked sweetbreads coated in bread crumbs and butter, served on toast with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Sweetbreads

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in warm water for about 1 hour to draw out the blood.

  2. Place them in boiling water and simmer for 10 minutes to firm them up.

  3. Drain the sweetbreads and brush them with the beaten egg.

  4. Roll them in bread crumbs, dip in egg again, and sprinkle with fresh crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour melted butter over the sweetbreads and place them in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  2. Bake for about 45 minutes.

  3. Serve the sweetbreads on toast with brown gravy around them.

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

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main ingredient; simmering firms their tissue so they hold their shape while coated and baked.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the sweetbreads and form an even coating.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating that adds texture and browns in the oven.
Melted butter
Adds fat that moistens the coating and helps it brown during baking.

The step that matters

Simmer the sweetbreads for 10 minutes. Heat coagulates the proteins in the sweetbreads, firming them so they hold their shape through rolling, dipping, and baking. Simmering too briefly leaves them soft and prone to falling apart.

“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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