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Heart Sweetbreads

Heart Sweetbreads are sweetbreads cooked with green onions, bacon, stock, and butter, then glazed and served with stewed peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Heart 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place green onions in the center of a baking dish and cover with layers of bacon.

Braise

  1. Moisten with 1 pint of stock and cover with buttered paper.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads on the stove, then transfer to the oven or a moderate fire.

  3. Braise for about 20 minutes, basting frequently with the liquid.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the lid and paper, then return to the oven to dry the surface.

  2. Glaze the sweetbreads and serve on a bed of stewed peas.

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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 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 that becomes tender during slow braising in moist heat.
Thin layers of fat bacon
Fat that bastes the meat and adds savory flavor as it renders.
1 pint good stock
Liquid that braises the sweetbreads and forms the base for basting.
Green onions
Aromatic base that flavors the braising liquid and the meat.

The step that matters

Drying the surface before glazing. Removing the lid and paper lets moisture evaporate so the surface can brown and glaze instead of staying wet and pale.

“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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