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Sweetbread, Fried

Fried sweetbread prepared by blanching, simmering, slicing, coating with egg and breadcrumbs, then frying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Sweetbread, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch the sweetbread according to standard sweetbread blanching instructions.

  2. Place the blanched sweetbread in a saucepan with the stock and add seasoning if needed.

  3. Simmer gently for 40 minutes.

  4. Press the sweetbread between two plates until cold.

  5. Cut the cold sweetbread into slices.

Coat and fry

  1. Brush the slices with egg.

  2. Coat the slices with breadcrumbs.

  3. Fry the coated slices in butter or hot fat until lightly browned.

  4. Drain the fried slices well.

Serve

  1. Serve the fried slices on a folded napkin or dish paper, garnished with fried parsley.

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

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,676 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Provides the tender, mild-flavoured meat that is the body of the dish.
Egg
Acts as a binder so the breadcrumbs stick to the slices.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Pressing the sweetbread until cold. Pressing while cold firms the meat so it holds its shape when sliced. Cutting it warm would crumble the slices and the breadcrumb coating would fall off in the fat.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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