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Mock Sweet Breads

A fried meat mixture shaped like sweetbreads, made with veal, suet, bread, lemon rind, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Mock Sweet Breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Soak the bread in water and lightly beat it.

  2. Mix the soaked bread with the chopped veal and suet.

  3. Add the grated lemon rind, salt, pepper, and nutmeg to the mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture like sweetbreads.

  2. Dip each piece in the beaten eggs, then coat with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the mixture and gives the meaty texture.
Veal suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread
Soaked and beaten, it adds moisture and softness to bind the mixture.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the bread crumbs adhere and brown evenly.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil until golden brown. Oil that is not hot enough lets the coated pieces soak up grease and steam instead of browning, leaving them pale and greasy. Hot oil sets the crumb coating quickly and drives the browning that gives a crisp exterior.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, lemon, pepper, egg. 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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