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Broiled Sweetbreads with Mushrooms

Broiled sweetbreads served with buttered mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Sweetbreads with Mushrooms

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold water for at least 30 minutes.

  2. Remove sweetbreads from water and place them in boiling water with lemon juice added. Cook slowly for 25 minutes.

  3. Transfer sweetbreads to very cold water, then remove and wipe dry. Split them.

Broil and serve

  1. Place sweetbreads on a broiler and spread 1 tablespoon of butter on top. Broil slowly until cooked on one side.

  2. Turn sweetbreads, spread the remaining tablespoon of butter, and cook until done on this side.

  3. Season sweetbreads with salt and pepper. Serve topped with 1 cup of canned mushrooms simmered in butter or ½ pound of fresh mushrooms prepared the same way.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the dish; their delicate texture firms and browns when cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the surface brown during broiling.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture as a topping, softened by simmering in butter.

The step that matters

Broiling the sweetbreads. Broil slowly so the outside browns while the inside cooks through. High heat can scorch the surface before the center is done, and turning them once helps both sides cook evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, lemon, mushroom):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon, mushroom. 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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