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Curried Sweetbreads

A curry of boiled sweetbreads simmered with onion, butter, flour, and lemon or chili vinegar, optionally garnished with pickled mango or coconut.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mango and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 221 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash and soak the sweetbreads.

  2. Boil them in salted water with the onion for 10 minutes or use weak veal broth.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads and let them cool completely.

  4. Cut into half-inch slices.

Fry and stew

  1. Lightly flour the slices.

  2. Fry the slices in butter.

  3. Place them in curried gravy to cover.

  4. Stew gently for 20 to 30 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Add lemon juice or chili vinegar to taste.

  2. Optionally add pickled mango or coconut for flavor.

  3. Serve the curry hot.

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. Mango + coconuttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together221 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + mangotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together302 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the curry.
Butter
Browns the lightly floured slices and adds richness to the frying step.
Flour
Light coating that helps the slices brown when fried and thickens the gravy.
Lemon juice or chili vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich curry and balances its flavor.

The step that matters

Let the sweetbreads cool completely before slicing. Cooling firms the cooked sweetbreads so they hold their shape when cut and floured, rather than tearing or falling apart in the pan.

Swap the mango

The recipe marks mango as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, butter, flour, lemon, coconut):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Mangothe original
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, butter, flour, lemon, coconut. 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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