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 Sweet-breads
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Parboil the sweetbreads until tender.
Dip the sweetbreads in the beaten egg, then roll them in bread crumbs.
Bake and serve
Place small pieces of butter on top of the sweetbreads.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, sprinkling with pepper and coarse sea salt before serving.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together27,232 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,662 recipes
Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
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Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together20,964 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together85,593 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweetbreads
- Main protein; parboiling first makes them tender before baking.
- Beaten egg
- Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the sweetbreads.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds richness and moisture, and helps the coating brown as it melts.
The step that matters
Parboil the sweetbreads until tender. Sweetbreads are delicate and need to be fully tender before baking, since the oven mainly crisps and browns the coating rather than cooking the meat through.
“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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