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Lamb 'sweetbreads, Fried

Fried lamb sweetbreads served with brown gravy and watercress garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Lamb 'sweetbreads, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in water for 2–3 hours to draw out the blood.

  2. Boil them for 10 minutes to firm them up, then transfer to cold water for another 10 minutes.

  3. Dry the sweetbreads with a soft cloth and press them between two dishes.

Coat and fry

  1. Dredge a little flour over them, brush with beaten egg, and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry them in bacon fat or butter, basting constantly until browned.

Serve

  1. Stir sherry into the brown gravy and pour it around the sweetbreads, not on top.

  2. Garnish with watercress.

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

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

  2. Flour + watercresstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Sweetbreads
Main protein; soaking and boiling firm and clean it before frying.
Beaten egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the surface.
Finely grated bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating when fried in fat.
Bacon fat or butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and rich flavour.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour to the finished dish.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic sweetness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Fry, basting constantly until browned. Frequent basting spreads hot fat over the coated surface, helping the crumb crust brown evenly and stay crisp without burning in spots.

“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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