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Sweetbreads, Fried

Fried sweetbreads served with green peas and bechamel or tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,058 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sweetbreads in salt and water for 1 hour to remove dark blood.

  2. Parboil sweetbreads in boiling water for 10 minutes, then drain and cool in cold water.

  3. Remove any loose thick skin and gristle without breaking them.

Coat and fry

  1. Dry sweetbreads, then coat them in flour.

  2. Dip them in beaten egg, then roll in bread crumbs or cracker dust.

  3. If large, split sweetbreads before crumbing.

  4. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve around a mound of green peas with bechamel or tomato sauce on the side.

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. Peas + tomatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  3. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Main protein; the tender, delicate meat that the crumb coating and frying surround.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the beaten egg stick to the sweetbreads.
Egg
Binds the flour to the crumbs so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs or cracker dust
Forms the crisp outer layer that browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Dry the sweetbreads before coating. Surface moisture stops flour from sticking evenly, so the egg and crumbs can slip off and the coating can steam rather than crisp in the oil.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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