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Cutlets of Sweetbreads

Sweetbread cutlets are thin slices of calf sweetbread coated in flour, egg, breadcrumbs, and fried, served with vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cutlets of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in warm salted water for 2 hours.

  2. Parboil the sweetbreads, trim them, and simmer for 10 minutes.

  3. Press the sweetbreads between two plates until cold, then cut into ½-inch thick slices.

Coat and fry

  1. Dust the slices with flour, dip in beaten eggs, and coat with breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve around a center of vegetables with a good sauce.

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 + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peastop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + peastop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,065 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Calves' sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the cutlets.
Eggs
Bind the flour and breadcrumbs to the sweetbreads so the coating adheres.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.
Fat
Conducts heat to brown the coating and crisp the outside of the cutlets.

The step that matters

Pressing the sweetbreads until cold. Pressing while cool firms the meat and removes excess moisture, so the slices hold their shape and the coating stays crisp rather than steaming off during frying.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Milletfits better
  3. Macadamia nutfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg. 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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