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Baked Sweet-breads

Baked sweetbreads served on fried bread with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Sweet-breads

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

  1. Prepare the sweetbreads as directed.

  2. Place them in a baking dish with stock or hot water.

  3. Add slices of salted pork and sprigs of parsley on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Fry slices of bread in hot butter until golden.

  3. Serve the sweetbreads on the fried bread with tomato 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Pork + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pork + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein, becoming tender and moist as it bakes in liquid.
Salted pork
Adds savoury fat and salt that flavour the sweetbreads as they cook.
Butter
Fat that browns the bread slices, adding golden colour and rich flavour.
Slices of bread
Crisp fried base that soaks up juices and supports the sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Baking in stock or hot water. Sweetbreads are delicate; too much heat or too long in the oven can toughen them and dry the surface. Keeping them in liquid helps them cook gently and stay moist.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, bread, butter, tomato, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, butter, tomato, sauce. 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.

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