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Veal Sweetbread

Veal sweetbread slices are soaked, browned, coated in a stiff batter, and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Sweetbread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Slice the veal sweetbreads and soak them in cold water.

  2. Drain the soaked sweetbreads.

Fry the sweetbreads

  1. Place the drained sweetbreads in a skillet with hot drippings.

  2. Cook the sweetbreads until browned on one side, then turn the sweetbreads over.

  3. In a bowl, make a stiff batter with the eggs, milk, flour, and salt.

  4. Dip each slice into the batter.

  5. Return each battered slice to the skillet and fry the slices until browned over moderate heat.

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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Veal + milktop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Veal sweetbreads
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender interior under a browned exterior.
Eggs
Bind the batter so it holds together and sets around the sweetbread slices.
Milk
Thins the egg and flour mixture into a batter that coats the slices evenly.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it stays stiff and clings to the sweetbreads while frying.
Hot drippings
Conduct heat and add fat, helping the slices brown in the skillet.

The step that matters

Soak and drain the sweetbreads before frying. Soaking in cold water helps draw out blood and impurities, giving a cleaner flavour and paler surface. Draining well removes surface water so the sweetbreads brown rather than steam in the hot drippings.

“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.

More veal sweetbread recipes

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