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Fried Sweet-breads

Fried sweetbreads are veal sweetbreads breaded and fried, served with a milk‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Fried Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak veal sweet-breads in cold water for about an hour.

  2. Lard the sweet-breads by drawing a lardoon of pork through the center.

  3. Boil sweet-breads in salted water or stock for about 20 minutes until thoroughly cooked.

  4. Transfer sweet-breads to cold water for a few moments, then remove the skin and pipes.

  5. Cut sweet-breads into even-sized pieces, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip pieces in beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, remove excess lard from the pan, leaving about ½ teaspoon.

  2. Add 1 cup of milk thickened with a little flour to the pan, stirring constantly until cooked.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, strain, and pour over the sweet-breads.

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 + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Veal sweet-breads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the main body of the dish.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the sweet-breads so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when fried in hot lard.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the coating its rich flavour and browning.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard. If the lard is not hot enough, the egg and crumb coating absorbs fat and turns greasy before it browns. Hot fat sets the coating quickly, keeping the crust crisp and the inside moist.

“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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