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Fried Sweet-breads

Fried sweetbreads are parboiled, seasoned, dredged in flour, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads in salted water until done.

  2. Remove and dry them with a cloth.

  3. Cut the sweetbreads in half with a sharp knife.

  4. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Dredge in flour.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until light brown.

  2. Alternatively, coat with egg and breadcrumbs or grated crackers before frying.

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. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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
Provide the tender, delicate meat that is the main component of the dish.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the surface brown and crisp during frying.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and browns the coated surface, adding richness.

The step that matters

Drying the sweetbreads before dredging. Surface moisture turns to steam in hot fat and makes the coating soggy or cause spattering. Patting them dry lets the flour adhere and crisp evenly.

“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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