(Also formerly as two words.) [app. f. SWEET a. + BREAD sb., but the reason for the name is not obvious.]
1. The pancreas, or the thymus gland, of an animal, esp. as used for food (distinguished respectively as heart, stomach, or belly sweetbread and throat, gullet, or neck sweetbread): esteemed a delicacy.
1565. Cooper, Thesaurus, Animellæ, the sweete breade in a hogge.
1578. Banister, Hist. Man, VII. 90. A certaine Glandulous part, called Thimus, which in Calues, and such others creatures, is most pleasaunt to be eaten. I suppose we call it the sweete bread.
1598. Chapman, Iliad, I. 458. [They] Cut off their thighes dubd with the fatte,… And pricke the sweetebreads thereupon.
a. 1613. Overbury, A Wife, etc. (1630), L ij b. For an inward bruise, Lambstones and sweet-breads are his onely Sperma Ceti.
1653. H. Cogan, trans. Pinto’s Trav., xxx. (1663), 121. Some sell their pigs, and some again sell nothing but the chitterlings, the sweet-breads, the blood, and the haslets.
1791. Boswell, Johnson, 9 May, an. 1778. He gave her her choice of a chicken, [or] a sweetbread.
1797–8. Lamb, Ros. Gray, xi. Wks. 1903, I. 26. I ordered my dinner—green peas and a sweetbread.
1824. in Spirit Pub. Jrnls. (1825), 281. We’ve gullet-sweetbreads, veined with red.
1846. Soyer, Gastron. Regen., 681. If I cannot meet with heart sweetbreads, I in general satisfy myself with the throats.
1884. G. Allen, Philistia, III. 156. Oysters, game, sweetbrands, red mullet, any little delicacy of that sort.
† 2. A bribe, douceur. Obs. slang or colloq.
a. 1670. Hacket, Abp. Williams, II. (1693), 163. I obtain’d that of the fellow,… with a few Sweetbreads that I gave him out of my Purse.
