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Mock Sweetbreads

A patty of finely chopped veal, suet, bread, and eggs, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Mock Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove the strings and sinews from the veal and chop it very fine with the veal suet.

  2. Soak the bread in milk and beat it until light.

  3. Mix the soaked bread with the veal and suet, adding lemon peel, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and eggs.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture like sweetbreads, then coat with egg and breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown and serve with thick veal 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Forms the main body of the mixture and gives the sweetbread-like meaty texture.
Veal suet
Adds fat that keeps the chopped meat moist and tender as it cooks.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds moisture and softness that lightens the mixture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and form a coating that helps breadcrumbs stick.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried in hot oil.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, the coated mixture absorbs grease and browns unevenly. Hot oil quickly sets the egg and crumb crust, sealing in moisture and producing a golden surface.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, egg, lemon, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, egg, 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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