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Curried Sweetbreads

Curried sweetbreads simmered in broth, optionally fried, then stewed in curried gravy and served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and mango match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 302 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Curried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash and soak the sweetbreads as usual.

  2. Boil water with a little coarse sea salt and a whole onion.

  3. Add the sweetbreads and simmer for 10 minutes, or use weak veal broth instead.

  4. Remove the sweetbreads and let them cool completely on a drainer.

  5. Cut the sweetbreads into half-inch slices.

Cook the curry

  1. Optionally, flour and fry the slices lightly in butter.

  2. Alternatively, place the slices in enough curried gravy to cover them.

  3. Stew gently for 20 to 30 minutes.

  4. Add lemon juice or chili vinegar to taste.

  5. Serve the curry very 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. Lemon + mangotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together302 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + mangotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + mangotop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Flour and butter 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
Main protein, becoming tender and delicate when simmered and then stewed in the gravy.
Butter
Fat for frying the floured slices, adding browning and rich flavour.
Flour
Light coating on the slices that helps them brown when fried in butter.
Lemon juice or chili vinegar
Acidity added to taste that brightens and balances the rich curried gravy.

The step that matters

Let the sweetbreads cool completely before slicing. Cooling firms the delicate tissue so the slices hold their shape instead of breaking apart in the gravy or pan.

Swap the mango

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

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Mangothe original

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