Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓
Sweetbread Cutlets
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the sweetbreads
Boil sweetbreads in salted water with lemon juice; drain and cover with cold water.
Once cold, chop sweetbreads finely and mix with chopped mushrooms to make one pint.
Make and shape the mixture
Melt butter in a pan, add flour, salt, and pepper; stir until smooth.
Slowly add cream and cook until thickened.
Stir in lemon juice, nutmeg, parsley, beaten egg, and the sweetbread-mushroom mixture.
Pour the mixture onto a dish to cool, then shape into palm-sized cutlets.
Coat, fry and serve
Roll cutlets in bread crumbs, then in diluted egg, and again in bread crumbs.
Fry in hot lard until golden brown.
Serve with allemande sauce.
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.
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Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together14,037 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together34,122 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Sweetbreads
- Provide the tender, rich meaty body of the cutlets.
- Mushrooms
- Add moisture and earthy flavor to the filling.
- Flour
- Thickens the butter and cream into a base that holds the cutlets together.
- Cream
- Adds richness and moisture to the filling.
- Egg
- Binds the mixture so the cutlets keep their shape when fried.
- Bread crumbs
- Form a crisp, golden-brown coating when fried.
The step that matters
Cool the mixture fully before shaping. Cooling lets the cooked cream, flour and egg set into a firm mass. If the mixture is still warm, the cutlets will be soft and may break or fall apart during coating and frying.
“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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