Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbread Cutlets, Glazed

Sweetbread cutlets glazed with a sauce of stock, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweetbread Cutlets, Glazed

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the head and pluck

  1. Wash the lamb's head and pluck thoroughly.

  2. Remove the brains and blanch them separately.

  3. Boil the head and pluck for about 15 minutes, then cool.

  4. Remove the tongue and trim the head neatly, scoring it.

Coat and brown

  1. Coat the head in egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Brown the coated head in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or over a fire.

Make the filling and serve

  1. Dice the tongue, liver, heart, and lights into small pieces.

  2. In a pan, fry chopped parsley, shallot, and mushrooms until light brown.

  3. Add flour to absorb the butter, then mix in stock or brown sauce.

  4. Season the mixture with lemon, cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and a pinch of sugar.

  5. Place the diced mixture under the head, and arrange the brains around it.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 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

Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs so they adhere to the coated head.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns during cooking.
Flour
Absorbs the butter and thickens the stock or brown sauce into a body for the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavour of the shallot and parsley in the pan.
Good second stock or brown sauce
Supplies moisture and savoury depth that the thickened filling needs.
Shallot
Adds mild aromatic sweetness when fried until light brown.

The step that matters

Browning the coated head. The egg and bread crumb coating must brown in the hot oven or over the fire without drying out the meat beneath. Browning comes from Maillard reactions at surface heat, so the coating needs to be well set and evenly coated before it goes in.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, liver, shallot, mushroom, butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, liver, shallot, mushroom, butter, flour, sauce. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes