Skip to main content
Main

Curried Sweetbreads

Curried Sweetbreads are sweetbreads simmered with onion, then fried or stewed in curried gravy, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coconut and mango match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 221 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Curried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash and soak the sweetbreads, then place them in boiling water with salt and the whole onion. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  2. If available, substitute weak veal broth for the water.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads and let them cool completely on a drainer.

  4. Cut the cooled sweetbreads into half-inch slices.

Cook the curry

  1. Dust the slices with flour and fry them lightly in butter, or place them directly into curried gravy.

  2. Stew the sweetbreads in the gravy gently for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Add lemon juice or chili vinegar to taste.

Serve

  1. Serve the curry hot, optionally adding grated coconut or Indian pickled mango for extra flavor.

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. Coconut + mangotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together221 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + mangotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together302 recipes

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

  3. Butter + coconuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,467 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + coconuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,831 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the curry.
Flour
Dusting helps the slices brown lightly and form a crust when fried in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying, adding browning and richness to the sweetbread slices.
Lemon juice or chili vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, spiced gravy.

The step that matters

Cool the sweetbreads completely before slicing. Cooling firms the delicate tissue so the slices hold their shape instead of breaking up in the gravy or frying pan.

Swap the coconut

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

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Coconutthe original
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, veal, flour, butter, lemon, mango. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes