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Sweetbreads with Calf’s Brains

A savory dish of sweetbreads coated in a brain and mushroom mixture, breaded and fried, served with ham.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Sweetbreads with Calf’s Brains

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brains and sweetbreads

  1. Soak the brains in saltwater for 2 hours. Remove the skin from the brains.

  2. Combine stock, onion, mace, bay leaf, sweet herbs, and mushrooms in a pan. Bring the mixture to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.

  3. Remove the brains and mushrooms from the pan. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  4. Mix the sieved ingredients with seasoning and the yolk of an egg.

  5. Soak the sweetbreads in lukewarm water for 2 hours. Drop the sweetbreads into boiling water for 1 minute. Immerse the sweetbreads in cold water for 1 minute.

  6. Simmer the sweetbreads in the stock for 15 to 20 minutes. Remove the sweetbreads and press them until cold.

Coat and fry

  1. Cut the sweetbreads into neat slices about ½ inch thick. Cover one side of each slice with the brain mixture.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs with parsley, salt, and pepper. Beat the eggs. Completely cover each piece of sweetbread with the egg. Roll each piece in the bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the sweetbreads in hot fat until golden brown. Drain the fried sweetbreads on paper.

Bake and serve

  1. Cut a round of bread about 2 inches thick, 8 inches long, and 5 inches wide. Remove the center of the bread. Fry the bread in hot fat.

  2. Place the fried bread in the center of a dish. Arrange the sweetbreads around the bread. Place a piece of ham between each sweetbread.

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

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

  3. Bread + hamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  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
Form the main body of the dish, with a tender interior and crisp coating when fried.
Calf's brains
Are pressed into a smooth mixture that gives the sweetbreads a rich, creamy layer.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumbs to the sweetbreads so the coating holds during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when fried.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury flavour alongside the sweetbreads.
Butter
Provides fat and flavour for the dish.

The step that matters

Frying the coated sweetbreads in hot fat until golden brown. Fat that is not hot enough lets the egg and crumb coating soak up oil and turn greasy, while the crumbs need enough heat to brown and set into a crisp crust.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, egg, ham, mushroom, onion, 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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