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Sweetbreads Full Dressed

Breaded sweetbreads fried in dripping and served with sauces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Full Dressed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads and let them cool.

  2. Cut the sweetbreads into pieces about ¾ inch thick.

  3. Dip each piece in the egg yolk, then coat with fine bread crumbs.

  4. If desired, add spices, lemon peel, and sweet herbs to the bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat clean dripping in a frying pan until it boils.

  2. Fry the sweetbreads in the hot oil until they are golden brown.

  3. Garnish with crisp parsley.

  4. Serve with mushroom ketchup, melted butter, anchovy sauce, or bacon/ham.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

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

Sweetbreads
Main protein; parboiling firms them so they hold their shape when coated and fried.
Egg yolk
Binds the fine bread crumbs to the sweetbreads so the coating adheres during frying.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Clean dripping
Hot fat conducts heat evenly, frying the coating crisp and browning it.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The dripping must be hot enough that the coating crisps and browns quickly. If the fat is too cool, the crumbs absorb oil and turn greasy before they set.

“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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