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Sweetbread Cutlets

A dish of sweetbread cutlets seasoned with ham, mushrooms, spices, coated in egg and crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Sweetbread Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads in ½ pint of good stock for 30 minutes. Drain and let cool.

  2. Remove all fat and gristle, then chop the sweetbreads finely.

  3. Mix in the chopped ham, mushrooms, salt, pepper, cayenne, nutmeg, and onion juice.

Make the binding

  1. In another saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and stir in 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  2. Add 2 tablespoons of cream and 1 tablespoon of jellied stock, stirring until smooth.

  3. Combine this mixture with the sweetbread mixture to form a soft mass.

  4. Pour onto a plate and let cool, then shape into cutlets.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each cutlet in beaten egg, then coat with fine cracker crumbs.

  2. Chill the cutlets in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

  3. Fry the cutlets in very hot fat for 2 minutes until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 meat, which is chopped and bound into the cutlet mass.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that thickens the binding.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that helps hold the mixture together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the binding, keeping the cutlets tender.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and savory flavor to the sweetbread filling.
Beaten egg
Acts as the adhesive so the cracker crumbs stick to the cutlets.

The step that matters

Chill the cutlets before frying. The mixture is soft and wet, so chilling firms the fat and binder so the cutlets hold their shape and the crumb coating stays intact in hot fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, cream. 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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