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Sweetbread Balls

Sweetbread Balls are small fried balls made from cooked sweetbread, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, shallot, egg, and egg yolk, served with brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sweetbread Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mince the cooked sweetbread.

  2. Combine sweetbread, bread crumbs, parsley, pepper, salt, and shallot in a bowl.

  3. Add enough egg to bind the mixture and roll it into balls.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each ball in egg yolk and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the balls in a little butter until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with a little brown gravy.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

  5. Bread + shallottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,245 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

Cooked sweetbread
Forms the main body of the balls and gives them their meaty flavor.
Egg
Binds the minced mixture so it holds together when rolled into balls.
Egg yolk
Gives the bread crumb coating a moist base so it adheres well.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer coating that browns during frying.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning and rich flavor on the surface.

The step that matters

Fry the balls in a little butter until golden brown. Butter browns at moderate heat and can burn if the pan is too hot, leaving the crumb coating dark outside and the centre underheated. Moderate heat and a patient turn give an even golden crust.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, pepper, egg, 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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