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Curried Sweetbreads

A stew of boiled sweetbreads simmered in curried gravy, optionally flavored with lemon or chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Curried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash and soak the sweetbreads.

  2. Place them in boiling water with a little coarse sea salt and a whole onion.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes. Alternatively, use weak veal broth instead of water.

  4. Remove the sweetbreads.

  5. Let them cool completely on a drain.

  6. Cut the cooled sweetbreads into half-inch slices.

  7. Optionally, flour the slices.

Cook and serve

  1. Lightly fry the slices in butter. Alternatively, place them in enough curried gravy to cover.

  2. Stew the sweetbreads gently in the gravy for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Stew 1 ounce of freshly grated cocoa nut in the gravy before adding the sweetbreads.

  4. Add lemon juice to taste before serving hot. Alternatively, add chili vinegar to taste before serving 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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + cocoatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Onion + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + cocoatop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together54 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and browning when the slices are lightly fried.
Curried gravy
Supplies the moisture and spiced sauce in which the sweetbreads are stewed.

The step that matters

Stewing the sweetbreads gently in the gravy. Gentle heat keeps the delicate sweetbread tender and prevents it from toughening or breaking apart, as vigorous boiling would do.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, 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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