Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Breads

Fried sweet breads soaked in salt water, parboiled, cooled, coated in flour, egg, breadcrumbs, and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sweet breads in a mixture of ½ cup salt and water for 30 minutes.

  2. Trim the sweet breads.

  3. Place them in a pot of hot water to parboil.

  4. Transfer to cold water to cool quickly.

Bread and fry

  1. Roll the cooled sweet breads in flour.

  2. Dip the rolled breads in the beaten egg.

  3. Coat the breads with bread crumbs.

  4. Fry in butter or suet fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter garnished with parsley.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet breads
The main ingredient; parboiling firms its texture before frying.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg adhere and gives the crust a base.
Beaten egg
Liquid binder that holds the bread crumbs to the surface.
Bread crumbs
Outer coating that browns and forms a crisp crust when fried.
Butter or suet fat
Frying fat that conducts heat and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Parboil and cool the sweet breads. Parboiling firms the delicate tissue so it holds its shape while frying. Cooling quickly in cold water stops the cooking so the breads stay tender rather than overcooked.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, egg, butter):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes