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Sweetbreads and Eggs on Toast

A dish of boiled sweetbreads and eggs served on toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,263 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweetbreads and Eggs on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil sweetbreads for 45 minutes.

  2. Drain the sweetbreads and let them cool.

  3. Remove skin and sinews from the sweetbreads.

  4. Cut the sweetbreads into square pieces.

Cook the mixture

  1. Heat olive oil in a frying pan.

  2. Add the sweetbread pieces to the pan.

  3. Break eggs over the sweetbreads.

  4. Mix the eggs and sweetbreads together.

  5. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Arrange slices of toast on a hot platter.

  2. Top the toast with the cooked mixture.

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 + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Egg + olivetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Form the main body of the dish, giving it a tender, meaty texture.
Eggs
Bind with the sweetbreads when cooked, setting into a soft, creamy mass.

The step that matters

Remove skin and sinews from the sweetbreads. Sinew and membrane left in the sweetbreads stay tough and chewy after cooking, because connective tissue does not soften much with heat. Removing it while the sweetbreads are cooled and firm makes the texture pleasant throughout.

“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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