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Dutch Sweetbreads

A savory dish of veal sweetbreads coated in breadcrumbs, fried, and served with a lemon‑flavored gravy and curled bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Dutch Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak the breadcrumbs in a little milk, then squeeze dry with a towel.

  2. Melt the butter in a pan, add the breadcrumbs, and cook over medium heat.

  3. Add the minced veal, egg, lemon rind, and season with salt and pepper.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small balls, dip in egg, coat with breadcrumbs, and fry in hot fat until golden.

Stew and serve

  1. Heat the brown stock in a pan, add seasoning, and stew the sweetbreads for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the sweetbreads, thicken the gravy by stirring until it boils, and add lemon juice.

  3. Serve the sweetbreads on a hot dish, pour the gravy over, and garnish with curled bacon and lemon slices.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Flour and butter 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

Minced veal
Forms the main body of the sweetbreads, giving them a firm, meaty texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the balls hold their shape while frying.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and add bulk, and form a golden crust when fried.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender during cooking.
Brown stock
Provides the liquid base for the gravy, adding savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Flour must be stirred until the gravy boils so the starch fully thickens the liquid and cooks out its raw taste. Stopping early leaves a thin, floury sauce.

“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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