A culinary term often referring to the pancreas or thymus. Usually, these organs, also known as offal, come from lambs or calves. To be clear, the term sweetbreads refers to two distinct organs, not that the organs themselves are interchangeable. If you are getting sweetbreads from calves, it’s probably the pancreatic variety. The reason for the focus on younger animals, especially for thymic based sweetbreads, is due to the process of thymic involution.

This page is primarily concerned with being able to provide a definition for the term itself. As such, not a lot of time will be spent on going over the various cooking methods. However, you can fry them. Prior to doing so, you will probably want to soak them in either saltwater or milk. Additionally, make sure that you either clean the sweetbreads or that they are cleaned of any lobes or excess membranes.