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Dutch Sweetbreads

Veal sweetbreads shaped into kidney shapes, breaded and fried, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Dutch Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Beat the veal and suet together in a mortar until well combined.

  2. Add the soaked bread and salt, mixing thoroughly.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into kidney shapes.

  2. Dip each piece in the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot oil until light brown.

  2. Serve with gravy.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Veal + milktop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main lean meat body that the shaped pieces are built from.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and helps bind the mixture.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere to the shaped pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried in hot oil.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until light brown. Frying at high heat browns the crumb coating through the Maillard reaction while the inside cooks. Frying too cool makes the coating greasy and soft, and frying too long can dry the meat.

“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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