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Broiled Sweetbreads

Broiled sweetbreads served with lemon butter, parsley, and lemon sections.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads and split them in half.

  2. Brush the halves with melted butter.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and celery salt.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil until cooked through.

  2. Serve with Lemon Butter and garnish with parsley and lemon sections.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Celery + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein, which becomes tender and delicately textured when parboiled and then broiled.
Melted butter
Adds fat and moisture to the surface and helps the halves brown under the broiler.
Lemon butter
Adds richness and acidity to the finished sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Broil until cooked through. Sweetbreads are delicate, and broiling them too long dries the surface and toughens the texture. Watching closely while they brown keeps them moist inside.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, lemon, parsley):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon, parsley. 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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