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Sweetbreads, Mock

A veal mock sweetbread made by mixing minced veal and suet with bread, egg, and seasonings, then frying and braising.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Sweetbreads, Mock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the veal and suet.

  2. Soak the slice of bread in hot white stock, then drain and finely beat it.

  3. Add the minced meat, suet, seasoning, and egg yolk to the bread mixture; blend thoroughly.

  4. Shape the mixture into pieces resembling sweetbreads using a small amount of dry breadcrumbs.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat the pieces with beaten egg and seasoned breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the stock from the bread around the sweetbreads, adding a little more stock.

  2. Cook for an hour, turning frequently, then add white sauce to make a total of 1½ pints.

  3. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with fancy-shaped vegetables, peas, or macaroni.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean raw veal
Forms the main body of the mock sweetbreads and gives them a meaty texture.
Veal kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the minced mixture moist and tender during cooking.
White bread
Soaked in stock and beaten, it binds the mixture and keeps it soft.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder that helps hold the shaped pieces together.
Dry breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the coating quickly; otherwise the pieces absorb grease and the coating can separate or stay pale while the inside is still soft.

“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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