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Cutlets of Sweetbreads and Piquant Sauce

Sweetbreads are blanched, sliced, seasoned, browned, floured, and simmered in broth, vinegar, and capers to make a piquant sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cutlets of Sweetbreads and Piquant Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads in boiling water for 5 minutes.

  2. Remove the membranes and cut them into slices similar to lamb cutlets.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

Cook and simmer

  1. In a skillet, melt butter and lightly brown the sweetbread slices.

  2. Sprinkle with flour and cook for 2 minutes.

  3. Add broth, vinegar, and capers; simmer for 10 minutes.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 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, delicate meat that forms the cutlets.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the slices brown in the skillet.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a light sauce once broth is added.
Broth
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and keeps the cutlets moist while simmering.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Sprinkle with flour and cook for 2 minutes. Cooking the flour briefly in the fat removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the sauce smoothly when the broth is added, rather than forming lumps.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, butter, flour, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, vinegar. 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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