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Sweetbreads, Cradle of

Breaded and fried sweetbreads simmered in a brown sauce and served in a hollowed-out fried bread case.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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, Cradle of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbread

  1. Soak the sweetbread in warm water for 2 hours.

  2. Boil the sweetbread in water for 10 minutes to blanch it.

  3. Cool the sweetbread in cold water.

  4. Tear the sweetbread into neat pieces using two forks.

  5. Roll each piece in beaten egg, then toss in bread crumbs.

  6. Let the pieces sit for 20 minutes.

  7. Repeat the egg and bread crumb process.

Make the sauce and fry the sweetbread

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan until hot.

  2. Fry the sweetbreads in the butter until golden brown.

  3. Remove the sweetbreads from the pan.

  4. Brown the flour in the same pan.

  5. Add the stock and stir until boiling.

  6. Skim well.

  7. Add the ketchup, Harvey's sauce, and lemon juice.

  8. Return the sweetbreads to the sauce and stew for 20 minutes.

Make the case and serve

  1. Cut the slice of bread, marking an inch from the edge with a knife.

  2. Fry the bread in boiling fat until golden brown.

  3. Remove the top of the bread and hollow out the center.

  4. Fill with the sweetbreads and garnish with mushrooms.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Its tender, delicate texture is the main element of the filling.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the sweetbread pieces so they form a coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying that browns the coating and adds rich flavor.
Flour
Browned in the pan fat to thicken the stock into a sauce.
Stock
Liquid base of the sauce that the sweetbreads stew in.

The step that matters

Frying the coated sweetbread until golden brown. Coating must be fully set and evenly browned before frying; wet or loosely attached crumbs fall off and absorb excess fat, and the sweetbread must be cooked through after blanching.

“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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