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Baked Sweetbreads

Breaded sweetbreads baked with butter and served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in warm water for 1 hour to draw out blood and improve color.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads for 10 minutes to firm them up.

  3. Drain the sweetbreads.

Coat and bake

  1. Brush the sweetbreads with egg.

  2. Sprinkle the sweetbreads with bread crumbs.

  3. Dip the sweetbreads in egg again.

  4. Coat the sweetbreads with more bread crumbs.

  5. Place the sweetbreads in a greased baking dish.

  6. Add a little oiled butter.

  7. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Toast the bread slices.

  2. Place the sweetbreads on top of the toast.

  3. Pour 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
Are the main protein; boiling firms their texture so they hold together when coated and baked.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the sweetbreads as they bake.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside during baking.
Oiled butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and moistness in the baking dish.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the dish when poured around the sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Boil the sweetbreads for 10 minutes. Boiling firms the delicate tissue so it can be coated and handled without falling apart. Too little firming leaves them fragile; overcooking can make them tough and dry.

“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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