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Vol Au Vent of Lamb Sweetbreads

Lamb sweetbreads coated in flour, beaten eggs, and breadcrumbs, fried and served with a tomato, shallot, and ham sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Vol Au Vent of Lamb Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the lamb sweetbreads in warm water for 2 hours.

  2. Boil them in a pot of water for 10 minutes, then transfer to cold water.

  3. Dust the sweetbreads with flour and set aside.

Bread and fry

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and yolks with salt until thin.

  2. Brush each sweetbread with the egg mixture, then dip in bread crumbs, pressing gently to adhere.

  3. Fry the breaded sweetbreads in hot hog's lard until golden brown.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. For the tomato sauce, combine tomatoes, shallots, chili vinegar, sugar, and raw ham in a pot.

  2. Add stock and boil for 45 minutes, then strain through a sieve.

  3. Keep the sauce warm in a bain-marie until 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. Peas + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together173 recipes

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

  2. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Peas + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb sweetbreads
Their soft, tender texture is the main body of the dish once cooked.
Eggs
Egg wash binds the bread crumbs to the sweetbreads and helps them brown when fried.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the outside of the fried sweetbreads.
Shallots
Add savory, aromatic depth to the tomato sauce as it simmers.
Tomatoes
Provide body, moisture and acidity as the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the breaded sweetbreads. Fry in hot lard until golden. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy, and if it is too hot the crumbs burn before the inside warms through.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, flour, egg, bread, peas, shallot, vinegar):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, flour, egg, bread, peas, shallot, vinegar. 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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