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Italian Attelets of Sweetbreads

A dish of fried sweetbread and calf's udder pieces coated in bread and egg, served with Italian sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg 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 ↓

Italian Attelets of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads.

  2. Stew them in a well-seasoned meat and vegetable gravy.

  3. Cut the sweetbreads into nearly 1-inch square pieces.

  4. Place the pieces in a sauce d'attelets.

  5. Let them cool.

Skewer and coat

  1. Skewer the sweetbreads and pieces of calf's udder alternately with silver skewers, aiming for equal size and square shape.

  2. Moisten the skewers with the sauce.

  3. Cover them with grated bread.

  4. Dip them into 4 well-beaten eggs.

  5. Sprinkle more grated bread on top, leveling it with a knife.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the skewers until they are a fine brown.

  2. Serve with an Italian sauce, either white or brown.

  3. Place grated bread in a stew-pan.

  4. Lay the skewers on top.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  2. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes
  5. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main filling; stewing makes the pieces tender and well flavoured.
Eggs
Bind the grated bread coating, which then sets when fried.
Grated bread
Forms a crumb coating that browns and crisps during frying.
Meat and vegetable gravy
Stews the sweetbreads, adding moisture and savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Frying the skewers until a fine brown. The coating browns through Maillard reactions, which need steady heat. Too hot and the crumbs scorch before the egg sets; too cool and the coating greases and stays pale.

“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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