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Mock Sweetbreads

Veal sweetbreads made from chopped veal, suet, soaked roll, lemon zest, spices, eggs, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the veal and veal suet.

  2. Soak the roll in milk until soft, then squeeze out excess milk.

  3. Mix the soaked roll with the veal, suet, lemon zest, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and eggs until well combined.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into sweetbread-like forms.

  2. Coat each piece in egg and then breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with thick veal gravy.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the mixture and gives the meaty flavour and texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the breadcrumb coating adhere.
Roll soaked in milk
Adds moisture and softness so the mixture stays tender when fried.
Veal suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich during frying.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coated pieces soak up fat and turn greasy before the crust sets. Hot oil quickly browns the breadcrumb coating and seals the surface, which helps the inside stay moist.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, lemon, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, lemon, pepper, 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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