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Mock Sweetbreads

A veal mixture shaped like sweetbreads, fried and served with gravy and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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. Chop the veal very fine or put it through a mincer.

  2. Mix the chopped veal with the veal suet.

  3. Add the bread crumbs, lemon rind, nutmeg, salt, pepper, eggs, and milk. Mix well.

  4. Shape the mixture like sweetbreads.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip in egg. Coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in butter or dripping until light brown.

Make the gravy and sauce

  1. Add flour to the pan after cooking the meat. Stir until light brown.

  2. Add cream and enough milk to reach desired thickness. Stir in parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Strain the tomatoes into a saucepan. Add salt, sugar, butter, and pepper. Bring to a boil.

  4. Thicken the sauce with potato flour.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the mock sweetbreads, giving a firm, meaty texture when chopped fine.
Veal suet
Adds fat that keeps the shaped mixture moist and tender during frying.
Bread crumbs
Bind the mixture and form a golden, crisp coating on the outside.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and help the coating adhere when dipped.
Flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth, browned gravy base.
Potato flour
Thickens the tomato sauce to a glossy, smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Shape and coat before frying. The mixture is soft and loose, so it must be firmly shaped and well coated in egg and crumbs to hold together in the pan. Frying over moderate heat browns the outside before the centre is overcooked.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, lemon, pepper, egg, milk, butter. 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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