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Sweet Bread, Liver and Heart

A sweet bread dish served with liver and heart, coated in egg yolk and breadcrumbs, fried and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweet Bread, Liver and Heart

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweet bread

  1. Parboil the sweet bread and let it cool.

  2. Cut the sweet bread into 1-inch thick pieces.

  3. Season the pieces with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and sage.

  4. Dip the pieces in egg yolk.

  5. Coat the pieces with fine bread crumbs.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the pieces until light brown.

  2. Fry slices of salt pork until brown.

  3. Fry the sweet bread in the pork fat.

  4. Mix a little flour and water until smooth.

  5. Stir the mixture into the fat.

  6. Add spices and wine if desired.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + porktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet bread
Its soft interior becomes tender after parboiling and gives the dish its main body.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the pieces during frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust when fried.
Salt pork
Its rendered fat fries the sweet bread and adds savory richness.
Flour
Thickens the fat and liquid into a smooth, lightly bound sauce.

The step that matters

Parboil the sweet bread and let it cool before cutting. Parboiling firms the delicate tissue so it holds its shape when cut and coated. Cooling lets the pieces firm further, so the egg and crumbs cling instead of sliding off in the hot fat.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, egg, pork, flour, wine):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, egg, pork, flour, wine. 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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