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Baked Sweetbreads

Baked sweetbreads are breaded and baked, served on toast 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

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

  2. Boil the sweetbreads for about 10 minutes to firm them up, then drain.

Coat and bake

  1. Brush the sweetbreads with egg, sprinkle with bread crumbs, dip in egg again, and coat with more bread crumbs.

  2. Drop a little oiled butter on top and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Prepare 3 slices of toast, place the sweetbreads on top, and 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
Main protein; soaking and boiling firm and clean it before baking.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs so they adhere to the sweetbreads as a coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating during baking.
Oiled butter
Adds fat that promotes browning and rich flavor on the surface.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the toast and sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Boil the sweetbreads to firm them up before coating. Boiling firms the surface proteins so the egg and bread crumbs can grip. If the sweetbreads are still soft, the coating can slip off or tear during dipping and baking.

“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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