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Croquettes of Sweetbreads

Croquettes made from veal sweetbreads, coated in cracker crumbs and fried.

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, almost to a paste, and season with salt, pepper, and grated onion.

Shape the croquettes

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

  2. Shape the mixture into small balls or cork-shaped croquettes.

  3. Prepare a frying kettle with hot fat, a dish with beaten eggs, and a platter of cracker dust.

  4. Wet hands with cold water, roll croquettes in cracker dust, then in beaten egg, and again in cracker dust.

Fry and serve

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

  2. 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

Veal sweetbreads
Main meat whose fine chopping forms the soft, savoury filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the chopped filling and add richness to the mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Cracker crumbs
Give the mixture enough body to hold its shape when stiff.
Beaten eggs
Act as a coating that helps the cracker dust adhere and brown.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling.

The step that matters

Roll the croquettes in cracker dust, egg, and cracker dust again. A dry, even double coating seals the filling; if the surface is patchy or wet, the croquettes can split or leak fat during frying.

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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