Skip to main content
Main

Sweet Bread Cutlets

Sweetbread cutlets are tender sweetbreads coated in a mushroom and breadcrumb mixture, then fried and served with tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Bread Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil sweetbreads in salt water until tender.

  2. Remove and dip in ice water, then skin them.

  3. Slice the sweetbreads and dice the mushrooms.

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a pan, then add flour and milk, stirring until smooth.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and onion juice, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg and soft bread crumbs, then add sweetbreads and mushrooms.

  4. Spread the mixture on a platter to cool.

Fry and serve

  1. Shape into cutlets, dip in bread crumbs, and fry in deep fat.

  2. Serve with tartar sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main tender meaty texture of the cutlets.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture so it holds together when shaped.
Milk
Forms a smooth sauce base that binds the filling and adds moisture.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the cutlets hold their shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture in the filling and form a crisp coating when fried.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cool the filling before shaping. A warm, loose mixture will not hold its shape and can fall apart in the hot fat. Spreading it out to cool lets the starch in the flour-milk base thicken and firm up, so the cutlets stay intact when fried.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, milk, pepper, egg, bread. 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 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes