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Sweetbread Croquettes

Sweetbread croquettes are small, fried rolls made from sweetbreads or ham mixed with onion, flour, and eggs, coated in cracker dust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Sweetbread Croquettes

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweetbread Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold salted water for 1 hour.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads in more cold salted water.

  3. Cool the sweetbreads in cold water.

  4. Trim off all flesh and membrane from the sweetbreads.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Sauté the grated onion in the melted butter until it begins to color.

  3. Stir in the flour and boiling water, and let the sauce boil.

  4. Chop or grate the sweetbreads or ham.

  5. Add the chopped sweetbreads or ham to the sauce, stirring continuously until it boils.

  6. Remove the sauce from heat.

  7. Stir in the yolks of the eggs into the sauce.

  8. Pour the mixture onto an oiled dish to cool.

Shape, coat and fry

  1. Prepare a frying kettle half full of fat over the fire.

  2. Set up a dish with beaten eggs and a platter of cracker dust.

  3. Wet your hands with cold water.

  4. Shape the mixture into small cork-shaped rolls.

  5. Coat the croquettes in cracker dust.

  6. Dip the croquettes in beaten egg.

  7. Coat again in cracker dust.

  8. Fry the croquettes in hot fat until golden brown.

  9. Drain the fried croquettes on brown paper.

  10. Serve hot, garnished with lemon slices or fresh 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty filling that gives the croquettes their body and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a sauce that binds the filling together.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and bind the filling; beaten whole eggs help the crumbs adhere.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and softens the onion's flavor.
Cracker dust
Forms a dry crisp coating that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Cooling the filling before shaping. The mixture must be cooled on an oiled dish so it firms up enough to hold a shape. Shaping a warm, soft filling makes the rolls slump and split in the hot fat.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, butter, onion, flour, egg, bread):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, butter, onion, flour, egg, bread. 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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