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Fried Sweetbreads

Fried sweetbreads served with tomato sauce and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Fried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Blanch the sweetbreads, press them, and cut into neat pieces.

  2. Brush the pieces with beaten egg, roll in bread crumbs, and set aside for 10 minutes.

  3. Repeat the egg and bread crumb process, then fry in boiling fat.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan, stir in flour smoothly, and gradually add seasoning and milk.

  2. Bring to a boil and cook for 3 minutes, then add cream and lemon juice.

Prepare the tomatoes and serve

  1. Arrange the sweetbreads overlapping in the center of a dish and pour the sauce around them.

  2. Prepare the tomatoes by covering them with boiling water for 2 minutes, then skin, slice, and cook gently in butter.

  3. Place the cooked tomatoes in the center of the sweetbreads and garnish with fried croutons.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 recipes

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

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Main protein; blanching firms them so they can be cut into neat pieces and hold their shape when fried.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating on the sweetbreads when fried.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the sweetbreads.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, cohesive white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and a mild richness.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor, and gently cooks the tomatoes.

The step that matters

Frying the coated sweetbreads. The fat must be boiling hot so the egg and crumb coating sets and browns quickly; cooler fat lets the coating soak up oil and fall away from the sweetbreads.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, egg, flour, milk, cream, lemon):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, egg, flour, milk, cream, lemon. 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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