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Veal Sweetbreads

Veal sweetbreads are boiled, chilled, breaded, and fried, served with peas or a milk‑flour gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak sweetbreads in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Cut each sweetbread and draw a piece of salt pork through the incision.

  3. Boil in salted water or soup stock until thoroughly cooked.

  4. Remove from water and place in cold water for a few minutes.

  5. Remove the little pipes and skin, then refrigerate until ready to cook.

Cook and serve

  1. When ready, season with salt and pepper, roll in bread crumbs, and fry in hot fat.

  2. Serve with green peas or a gravy made by thickening 1 cup of milk with flour in the frying pan.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
The main ingredient; the tender texture is the focus of the dish.
Salt pork
Drawn through the sweetbreads to add fat and savory flavor as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when the sweetbreads are fried.
Milk
Thickened with flour to make a simple gravy for serving.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a gravy in the frying pan.

The step that matters

Boil until thoroughly cooked. Sweetbreads must be fully cooked through before frying so the interior sets and is safe to eat. Frying only browns the outside, so the boiling time decides whether the centre is done.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, bread, milk, flour, nutmeg, parsley):

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, bread, milk, flour, nutmeg, parsley. 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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