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Croquettes of Sweetbreads

Croquettes of sweetbreads are small fried balls made from veal sweetbreads, onion, egg yolks, butter, cream, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Croquettes of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold salted water for 1 hour, removing pipes and membranes.

  2. Boil sweetbreads in salted water with vinegar for 20 minutes, then cool in cold water.

  3. Chop sweetbreads finely until almost a paste.

Make the mixture

  1. Season the chopped sweetbreads with salt, pepper, and grated onion.

  2. Add egg yolks, butter, cream, and enough cracker crumbs to form a stiff mixture.

  3. Shape the mixture into small balls or cork shapes.

Coat, fry and serve

  1. Coat each croquette in cracker crumbs, then beaten egg, and again in cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden brown, then drain on brown paper.

  3. Serve hot with sliced lemon or parsley.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main body and delicate, tender texture of the croquette filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the chopped sweetbread mixture.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture to form a stiff mixture and give the coating a crisp, browned crust.
Beaten eggs
Act as a binder so the crumb coating adheres and crisps when fried.

The step that matters

Chopping the sweetbreads to an almost paste. Fine chopping gives the filling an even, smooth texture and lets the binders hold it together; coarse pieces leave the croquettes crumbly and uneven.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, vinegar, pepper, egg, butter, cream, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, vinegar, pepper, egg, butter, cream, lemon. 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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