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Lamb's Sweetbreads

Fried lamb sweetbreads coated in beaten egg and seasoned breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb's Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose young and tender lamb's sweetbreads.

  2. Parboil the sweetbreads until tender.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip them in beaten egg, then coat with seasoned bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in a little batter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted bacon if desired; no gravy needed.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Lamb + eggtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,204 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's sweetbreads
Main ingredient; when parboiled and then fried, they turn tender inside with a crisp outside.
Egg
Binds the seasoned bread crumbs to the sweetbreads so the coating stays on during frying.
Seasoned bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Batter for frying
Adds a crisp, browned crust as it cooks in the hot fat.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. The coating browns through the Maillard reaction, which needs steady heat. If the pan is too hot, the crumbs darken or burn before the sweetbreads heat through. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs excess oil and turns greasy.

“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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