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Fried Sweet-breads

Fried sweetbreads are pieces of sweetbread coated in beaten egg and bread crumbs, then fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Fried Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove all skin and fat from the sweetbreads and cut them into suitable pieces.

  2. Plunge the pieces into boiling water for about 2 minutes. Remove from water, drain, and dry with a cloth.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece in the beaten egg, then roll in grated bread crumbs.

  2. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and fry in butter until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve with mushrooms cooked in cream, green peas, or plain with lemon.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main protein; its tender, delicate texture is the centrepiece of the dish.
Beaten egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the sweetbreads so the coating adheres during frying.
Grated bread crumbs
Form a crisp golden coating that browns and contrasts with the soft interior.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning to the coating.

The step that matters

Dry the sweetbreads after blanching. Surface moisture left after the boiling water step would dilute the egg and steam the crumbs, so they would not brown and crisp well in the butter.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, pepper, butter, mushroom, cream, lemon):

  1. Peasthe original
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, pepper, butter, mushroom, cream, lemon. 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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