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Fried Sweetbread Cutlets

Fried sweetbread cutlets are sliced sweetbreads breaded and fried, served with Hollandaise or Sauce Tartare and garnished with peas or asparagus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and peas are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,065 recipes. Both carry 2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Sweetbread Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil sweetbreads in salted, acidulated water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain and dry the sweetbreads.

  3. Cut into uniform slices.

Bread and fry

  1. Dip each slice in breadcrumbs, then beaten eggs, and again in breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry in deep hot fat until golden brown.

  3. Optionally, sauté in bacon fat and garnish with crisp bacon.

Serve

  1. Serve with Hollandaise sauce or Sauce Tartare.

  2. Garnish with French peas, stringless beans, or asparagus spears.

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. Egg + peastop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

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

  2. Sauce + peastop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,109 recipes
  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 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; parboiling firms them so slices hold their shape during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Eggs
Bind the breadcrumb coating so it adheres to the sweetbread slices.

The step that matters

Drying the sweetbreads before breading. Moisture on the surface keeps the breadcrumbs and egg from sticking and turns steam against the coating, so it can fall off or fry unevenly in the hot fat.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Sesamefits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pecansfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. 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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