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Fried Sweetbreads

Fried sweetbreads are blanched and sliced sweetbreads coated in breadcrumbs and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,322 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Fried Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the sweetbreads in a saucepan and cover with lukewarm water.

  2. Bring to a boil to blanch them.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads from the water and gently wipe them with a cloth.

  4. Cut into slices about ½ inch thick, or leave whole if using lambs' sweetbreads.

Fry

  1. Fry the sweetbreads in lard or clarified dripping.

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. Lamb + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,322 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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 hold their shape when fried.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the sweetbreads during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot fat.
Lard or clarified dripping
Frying medium that conducts heat evenly and browns the coating.

The step that matters

Blanching the sweetbreads. Bringing them to a boil in water firms the tissue and helps remove impurities, so they hold their shape and fry cleanly rather than falling apart or greasing up.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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