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Rissoles of Sweetbreads

A savory dish of sweetbread rissoles simmered in gravy, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Rissoles of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Pour boiling water over the sweetbreads and remove the skin.

  2. Parboil the sweetbreads and cut them into small dice.

  3. Boil and blanch the sweetbreads, then mince finely.

Make the rissoles

  1. Pulverize bread crumbs until you have one-third as much as the meat.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and beaten eggs; mix until smooth.

  3. Roll the mixture into long balls and flour them well.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat seasoned gravy and drawn butter until boiling.

  2. Cook the rissoles in the gravy for ten minutes, then drain and place on a hot dish.

  3. Pour thickened gravy over the rissoles.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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
Provide the main meat, which is parboiled, minced and bound into the rissoles.
Eggs
Bind the minced mixture so the rissoles hold their shape when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Add body to the mixture and absorb moisture so it can be shaped.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the dressing and the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the dressing and helps the rolled rissoles keep a dry outer coating.

The step that matters

Mixing the bound mixture. The sweetbreads, crumbs and beaten eggs must be mixed until smooth so the egg sets evenly during cooking and holds the rissoles together without crumbling.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

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