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Sweetbread Cutlets

Sweetbreads are boiled, sliced, coated with egg yolk and breadcrumbs, fried, and served with mushroom‑lemon gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Sweetbread Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads in water or veal broth for 30 minutes.

  2. Once cold, cut them into equal slices.

  3. Brush the slices with yolk of egg.

  4. Dip the slices into seasoned bread-crumbs.

Cook and serve

  1. Fry in butter until light brown.

  2. Arrange on a dish, placing them high in the center.

  3. Pour gravy made from the pan, thickened with mushroom powder and flavored with lemon juice, underneath.

  4. Optionally, serve each cutlet on a slice of cold boiled tongue.

  5. For variety, use fried bread croutons instead of tongue.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 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

Sweetbreads
Main protein; boiling firms them so they can be sliced cleanly into cutlets.
Yolk of egg
Binds the bread-crumb coating so it adheres to the slices during frying.
Very fine bread-crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried in butter.
Butter
Fat for frying that promotes browning and adds rich flavor to the coating.
Mushroom powder
Thickens the pan gravy and adds savory, umami depth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich gravy.

The step that matters

Dip and fry in butter until light brown. Egg yolk must coat the slices evenly so the crumbs stick; if the butter is too cool the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy, while excessive heat burns the crumbs before the centre is heated through.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

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