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Lamb's Sweetbreads

Lamb's Sweetbreads are fried sweetbreads served with a sherry gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Lamb's Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the sweetbreads from the tin and dry them.

  2. Divide the sweetbreads into neat pieces.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the egg and dip the sweetbread pieces in it, then coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the coated sweetbreads in hot fat until they are a bright brown.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. In a saucepan, prepare the gravy and add the sherry, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt.

  2. Pour the gravy mixture into an entree dish and place the fried sweetbreads 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sherry + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together682 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb's sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that is the base of the dish.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the sweetbread pieces so the coating adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating that browns in the hot fat.
Sherry
Adds acidity and sweet, nutty aroma to the gravy.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and savory body under the fried sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Fry the coated sweetbreads in hot fat until bright brown. The egg and crumb coating sets and browns quickly in hot fat, so the pieces need enough heat to crisp the outside. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs grease and turns soggy before it browns.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, sherry, egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, sherry, egg, bread, pepper. 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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