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Sweetbreads As Cutlets

Sweetbreads are blanched, sliced, and sautéed with lemon, pepper, and salt, then served as cutlets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sweetbreads As Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water for about 10 minutes, then cool them in cold water.

  2. Remove and dry the sweetbreads with a cloth, then cut them into 12 or 14 long pieces for cutlets.

Cook and serve

  1. In a cutlet pan, heat butter or lard, then add lemon juice, white pepper, and salt.

  2. Sauté the cutlets without coloring them, then place them on white paper to absorb excess grease.

  3. Serve the cutlets arranged on a platter.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + white peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,658 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 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

Sweetbreads
Form the tender, delicate body of the cutlets once blanched and sautéed.
Butter or lard
Conducts heat in the pan and adds richness and moisture to the cutlets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the mild, rich flavor of the sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Sauté the cutlets without coloring them. Sweetbreads are delicate and rich. Over-high heat or long cooking browns the surface and toughens the meat, so gentle cooking keeps them pale, tender, and moist.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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