Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbread Croquettes

A fried croquette made from sweetbread, chicken, tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, and herbs in a thickened sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Sweetbread Croquettes

Why it works: Tomato and olive are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,539 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sweetbread Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads.

  2. Stew the sweetbreads slowly in soup stock or water.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, mix cornstarch, water, vinegar, cream, chicken, tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, salt, onions, and herbs.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat, stirring until thick.

  3. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and parsley.

  4. Chop the sweetbreads finely and stir them into the mixture.

  5. Boil the mixture for five minutes.

  6. Spread the mixture on a flat dish to cool.

  7. Cut the cooled mixture into pieces.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll the pieces in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the bread-crumbed pieces in hot olive oil until golden.

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. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,539 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,172 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).

  3. Olive + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,571 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  4. Tomato + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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 meat that forms the body of the croquettes.
Cornstarch
Thickens the mixture so it sets firm enough to cut and coat.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness to the filling, softening its texture.
Eggs
Bind the coating so bread crumbs stick to the pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and gentle acidity to the filling.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture before cutting. The filling must cool and firm after thickening; cutting it warm causes it to slump and makes the pieces hard to coat and fry cleanly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, cream, chicken, tomato, olive, mushroom, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cream, chicken, tomato, olive, mushroom, 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.

More sweetbread croquettes recipes

Chicken 7 See all 61 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesChicken BrothChicken Broth257 recipesChicken SoupChicken Soup156 recipes