Skip to main content
Main

Rissoles of Sweetbreads

A dish of sweetbread rissoles coated in breadcrumbs and fried in lard, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Rissoles of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads for 1 hour until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Chop the sweetbreads finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine minced veal, mushrooms (or ketchup), and butter.

  2. Cook gently, shaking the pan to prevent burning.

  3. Dredge in flour.

  4. Add broth and cream.

  5. Stir until it boils and thickens.

  6. Strain the mixture.

Shape and coat

  1. Use a little to moisten the chopped sweetbreads.

  2. Boil the sweetbreads for 3-4 minutes, then let them cool.

  3. Form the sweetbreads into small balls.

  4. Roll the balls in bread crumbs.

  5. Dip the balls in beaten egg.

  6. Roll the balls in bread crumbs again.

  7. Place the coated balls in a cold place until ready to fry.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in boiling lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve in a napkin with sauce on the side.

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

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, rich meat that forms the filling of each rissole.
Minced veal
Adds body and savoury flavour to the filling, binding it with the sweetbreads.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce and filling.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the chopped sweetbreads.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs stick to the shaped balls.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned crust when fried.

The step that matters

Chill the coated balls before frying. Cold chilling firms the egg and crumb coating so it stays intact in hot lard instead of cracking or falling apart and absorbing grease.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes