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Veal Sweetbread

A roasted veal sweetbread coated in breadcrumbs and served with a mushroom ketchup and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Veal Sweetbread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbread

  1. Trim the sweetbread and par-boil it for 5 minutes.

  2. Place it in a basin of cold water to cool.

  3. Once cold, dry it thoroughly with a cloth.

  4. Run a skewer through it and tie it onto a spit.

Coat and roast

  1. Brush it with the egg yolk and coat it well with bread crumbs.

  2. Roast it until cooked through.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, fry some bread crumbs in melted butter, then add mushroom ketchup and lemon juice.

  2. Serve the sweetbread on buttered toast, garnished with the 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mushroom + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Forms the main meat, which becomes tender and mild when par-boiled and then roasted.
Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumbs to the surface so they stay in an even coating.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside and thicken the sauce when fried in butter.
Melted butter
Fats that fry the crumbs for the sauce, adding richness and golden browning.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and mushroom flavours.

The step that matters

Drying the sweetbread before coating. Any surface water keeps the egg yolk and bread crumbs from adhering evenly and steams the coating instead of letting it crisp in the oven.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, butter, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Red currantfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Grapefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, butter, mushroom, ketchup. 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.

More veal sweetbread recipes

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