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To Bake Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads baked in butter and lard, served with tomato or mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

To Bake Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the sweetbreads until cooked.

  2. Let the sweetbreads cool.

  3. Roll the cooled sweetbreads in beaten eggs.

  4. Roll the sweetbreads in bread crumbs.

  5. Allow the sweetbreads to sit so the egg and crumbs can dry.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat equal parts butter and lard in a hot skillet.

  2. Add the sweetbreads to the skillet.

  3. Baste the sweetbreads constantly for 15 minutes.

  4. Serve with tomato or mushroom sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Butter + eggtop 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
Main protein; boiling cooks them so they can then be breaded and fried.
Eggs
Act as a binder that helps the bread crumbs adhere to the sweetbreads.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in fat.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor and helps the coating brown in the skillet.
Lard
Provides a high-heat frying fat that helps the coating crisp and brown.

The step that matters

Let the egg and crumb coating dry before frying. A dried coating adheres better and fries crisp instead of sliding off or steaming. Frying a wet, loose coating in hot fat often leads to uneven browning and breakage.

“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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