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Sweetbreads, Cutlets of

Sweetbreads are sliced, breaded, fried, and served with optional gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,765 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Sweetbreads, Cutlets of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in water.

  2. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water.

  3. Simmer the sweetbreads in flavored stock for 30 minutes.

  4. Cool the sweetbreads in the stock.

  5. Drain the sweetbreads.

  6. Dry the sweetbreads with a cloth.

  7. Cut the sweetbreads into 1¼‑inch slices.

Bread the cutlets

  1. Dip each slice into beaten egg.

  2. Dip each slice into seasoned bread crumbs.

  3. Dip each slice into clarified butter.

  4. Dip each slice again into seasoned bread crumbs.

  5. Shape the slices.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the slices in hot fat until browned, about 3‑4 minutes.

  2. Drain the cutlets.

  3. Arrange the cutlets on a dish.

  4. Pour brown gravy flavored with mushroom and lemon juice, or white wine, around the cutlets.

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. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  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 + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the cutlets.
Beaten egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the sweetbread slices so the coating stays on during frying.
Seasoned bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the coating brown evenly.

The step that matters

Frying the slices in hot fat until browned. If the fat is not hot enough, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy before it browns. Hot fat sets the egg and crumbs quickly into a crisp crust that holds the cutlet together.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits about as well
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, mushroom, white wine. 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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