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Sweetbreads, Mock

A veal and suet mock sweetbread shaped and fried, served with white sauce and garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Sweetbreads, Mock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Mince the veal and suet.

  2. Soak the slice of bread in hot white stock, then drain and finely beat it.

  3. Add the minced meat, suet, seasoning, and egg yolk; blend thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into small pieces resembling sweetbreads, coating them with beaten egg and seasoned breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry the shaped pieces in hot fat until golden brown.

Cook and serve

  1. Pour the stock from the soaked bread around the sweetbreads and cook for an hour, turning frequently.

  2. Add enough white sauce to make a total of 1½ pints and serve on a hot dish, garnished with vegetables or peas or macaroni.

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

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

  2. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

  3. Lemon + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean raw veal
Provides the main meaty body and bulk of the mock sweetbreads.
Veal kidney suet
Adds fat that keeps the minced mixture moist and tender during cooking.
White bread
Soaked in stock and beaten, it binds the mixture and adds moisture.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture together so the shaped pieces hold their form.
Dry breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden browned coating when fried.

The step that matters

Frying until golden brown. Frying the coated pieces in hot fat browns the breadcrumb crust through the Maillard reaction, creating flavour and colour and helping the shapes hold together before the long simmer.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, lemon, pepper, bread, egg, sauce):

  1. Peasthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Beansfits about as well
  4. Walnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, lemon, pepper, bread, egg, sauce. 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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