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Curried Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads simmered, sliced, and cooked in curried gravy or fried in butter, finished with lemon juice or chili vinegar.

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

  1. Wash and soak the sweetbreads as usual.

  2. Place them in boiling water with a little coarse sea salt and a whole onion; simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove and drain the sweetbreads, then let them cool completely.

  4. Cut the sweetbreads into half-inch slices.

Cook and serve

  1. Flour and fry them lightly in butter, or place them in enough curried gravy to cover.

  2. Stew gently for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Add lemon juice or chili vinegar to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; firm, tender texture when simmered and then stewed gently.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the floured slices when frying.
Curried gravy
Carries the flavour and keeps the sweetbreads moist during the gentle stew.
Lemon juice or chili vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy and balances the spice.

The step that matters

Stew gently for 20 to 30 minutes. Sweetbreads are delicate; a hard boil toughens the proteins and makes them dry and rubbery. Keeping the gravy at a gentle simmer lets them become tender and absorb the sauce.

Swap the mango

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

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