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Croquettes of Sweetbreads

A fried dish of veal sweetbreads coated in cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Croquettes of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak the sweetbreads in cold salted water for 1 hour, removing pipes and membranes.

  2. Boil in salted water with vinegar for 20 minutes, then cool in cold water.

  3. Chop the sweetbreads finely, almost to a paste.

  4. Season with salt, pepper, and grated onion.

Shape the mixture

  1. Add beaten egg yolks, butter, cream, and enough cracker crumbs to form a stiff mixture.

  2. Shape the mixture into small balls or cork shapes.

Coat and fry

  1. Prepare a frying kettle with hot oil, a dish with beaten eggs, and a platter with cracker dust.

  2. Wet your hands with cold water.

  3. Roll the croquettes in cracker dust.

  4. Roll them in beaten egg.

  5. Roll them again in cracker dust.

  6. Fry the croquettes in hot oil until golden brown.

  7. Drain on brown paper.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with sliced lemon or 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 croquettes, giving a soft, finely textured filling.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the mixture so it holds its shape, then form a crisp coating.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and create a coating that sets and browns when fried.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the filling tender rather than dry.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and smooth texture in the filling.

The step that matters

Add just enough cracker crumbs to form a stiff mixture. Crumbs absorb liquid from the cream, eggs and chopped sweetbreads. If the mixture stays wet it will not hold its shape and may break apart in the hot oil.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, vinegar, pepper, egg, butter, cream, lemon):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, vinegar, pepper, egg, butter, cream, lemon. 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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