Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbreads

A dish of boiled and fried sweetbreads served with vegetables and a butter‑harvey sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Sweetbreads

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in water for 3–4 hours to remove impurities.

  2. Blanch sweetbreads in boiling water for 2 minutes.

  3. In a stewpan, combine sweetbreads with onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns, mace, and bacon.

  4. Cover with broth if available.

  5. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  6. Cook for 20 minutes.

Coat and cook

  1. Remove sweetbreads, dry on a cloth, and coat with egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Skewer each sweetbread and roast over a sharp fire for 15 minutes until brown.

  3. Alternatively, brown in a hot oven or fry in hot lard for 10 minutes, then stew longer.

Serve with peas and sauce

  1. Serve with vegetables like peas or French beans, prepared with sugar, salt, pepper, and butter.

  2. For sauce, combine melted butter, Harvey sauce, and catsup in a stewpan.

  3. Boil the sauce.

  4. Add water if the sauce is too thick.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; soaking and gentle cooking keep the meat tender and mild.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres during frying or roasting.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried or roasted.
Lard or dripping
Conducts heat for frying, producing browning and a crisp crust.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown over a sharp, hot heat. Coating and browning must be done quickly at high heat so the crumb crust sets and browns before the sweetbread overcooks, keeping the inside tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, egg, bread):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, carrot, turnip, parsley, thyme, egg, bread. 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 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes