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Sweetbreads and Mushroom Cutlets

Cutlets made from diced sweetbreads and mushrooms bound in a thick white sauce, then breaded and fried in deep fat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Sweetbreads and Mushroom Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil sweetbreads in salted water until tender.

  2. Remove sweetbreads and dip in ice water.

  3. Remove the skins and gristly fibers from the sweetbreads.

  4. Once cold, cut sweetbreads into dice.

Make the filling

  1. In a pan, melt butter.

  2. Add flour and milk and cook until thick.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Stir in bread crumbs, beaten egg, mushrooms, and sweetbreads.

  5. Return to heat and cook for a few seconds.

  6. Pour mixture onto a platter and let cool for several hours.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into cutlets.

  2. Roll cutlets in bread crumbs and beaten egg.

  3. Fry in deep fat.

  4. Drain on brown paper and serve with peas and tartar sauce.

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

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, becoming tender when boiled and then diced.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a binding white sauce that holds the cutlets together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens with the flour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the sauce and bind the filling, and later form a crisp outer coating.
Mushrooms
Add moisture and earthy flavor to the filling.

The step that matters

Let the filling cool fully before shaping. The thickened sauce must set firmly while cold; if the mixture is still warm, the cutlets will be soft and fall apart when rolled and fried.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, butter, flour, milk, bread, lemon, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, flour, milk, bread, lemon, pepper. 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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