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Baked Sweetbreads

Baked sweetbreads are sweetbreads coated in egg and breadcrumbs, baked with butter, served with toast and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in warm water for over an hour to draw out blood and improve color.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads for about 10 minutes to firm them up, then drain.

  3. Brush the sweetbreads with egg, sprinkle with bread crumbs, dip in egg again, and coat with more bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the sweetbreads in a greased baking dish, dot with oiled butter, and bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 45 minutes.

  2. Prepare 3 slices of toast, place the sweetbreads on top, and pour brown gravy around them.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein; boiling firms its texture so it holds its shape while baking.
Eggs
Act as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the sweetbreads as a coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a golden, crisp coating that browns in the oven.
Oiled butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Boiling the sweetbreads before coating. Boiling firms the sweetbreads so they hold their shape through egg dipping and baking. Drain them well so excess water does not make the crumb coating soggy.

“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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