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Baked Sweet-breads

Baked sweetbreads coated in beaten egg and bread crumbs, baked with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 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

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads until tender.

  2. Dip the sweetbreads in the beaten egg, then roll them in bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Place small pieces of butter on top of the sweetbreads.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes, sprinkling with pepper and coarse sea salt before serving.

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. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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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