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Sweetbread Croquettes

Sweetbread croquettes are fried balls made from blanched sweetbreads mixed with cream, butter, flour, seasonings, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Sweetbread Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweetbread Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water with salt, lemon juice, bay leaf, onion, and celery for 20 minutes.

  2. Remove the sweetbreads from the water and cover them with cold water.

  3. Once cold, pick apart the sweetbreads, discarding as much membrane as possible.

Make the filling

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan, add flour and mix well.

  2. Stir in cream or milk until it bubbles.

  3. Add seasonings and the egg yolk, and cook for a moment longer.

  4. Pour the mixture over the sweetbreads and mix well.

  5. Let the mixture cool completely.

  6. Mold the cooled mixture as desired.

Coat, fry and serve

  1. Roll the molded mixture in fine bread crumbs.

  2. Dip the crumb-coated mixture in egg mixed with hot water.

  3. Roll the mixture in coarse bread crumbs.

  4. Fry two croquettes at a time in hot fat until golden.

  5. Drain the fried croquettes on paper.

  6. Serve the croquettes with cream sauce and mushrooms.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the croquettes, providing the meaty filling texture.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and cream into a binding sauce that holds the filling together.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, setting into a smooth, cohesive filling once cooled.
Egg
Binds the filling and, as a wash, helps the bread crumbs adhere to the surface.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the roux base that thickens the filling.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool completely before molding. Warm filling is soft and sticky, so it will not hold its shape or stay coated. Once cooled, the starch-thickened sauce firms up, letting the croquettes keep their form through breading and frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, butter, flour, parsley, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, butter, flour, parsley, nutmeg, 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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