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Sweet-breads a LA Maitre D'hotel

Sweetbreads coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, fried and served with potato puree and mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Sweet-breads a LA Maitre D'hotel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the sweetbreads into slices.

  2. Dip each slice in flour.

  3. Apply Maitre d'Hôtel butter to each slice and smooth it with a wet knife.

  4. Roll the slices in beaten egg.

  5. Roll the slices in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat for two minutes until golden.

  2. Serve on a bed of potato puree, with mushroom sauce poured around.

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

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the dish.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the slices so they form an even, crisp coating.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust when fried.
Maitre d'hotel butter
Adds richness and flavour that melts into the warm sweetbread.
Mushroom sauce
Adds moisture and earthy savoury flavour alongside the crisp coating.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy before it sets and turns golden.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, mushroom, sauce, flour, egg, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, mushroom, sauce, flour, egg, bread. 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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