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Sweetbreads Fried

Fried sweetbreads served in a peppered cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Sweetbreads Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare sweetbreads as for salad without cutting them.

Fry

  1. Dip sweetbreads in milk, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in butter until browned.

Make the cream sauce and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat heavy cream with a little pepper.

  2. Dust in flour and stir until it boils.

  3. Pour the cream sauce over the sweetbreads and serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Sweetbreads
Serve as the main protein, giving a tender interior under the crisp coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust when fried in butter.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds browning and richness to the crust.
Heavy cream
Forms the body of the sauce and adds richness and smooth texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream sauce as it heats and comes to a boil.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the cream until it boils. Flour must be dispersed evenly and the sauce brought to a boil so starch swells and thickens it. Lumps or underheating leave the sauce thin or grainy.

“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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