Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbread Croquettes

Sweetbread croquettes made from parboiled sweetbreads, pork fat, onion, parsley, egg yolks, and bread crumbs, served with French canned peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Sweetbread Croquettes

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbread Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads for 5 minutes.

  2. Trim off strings and lard them with strips of fat pork.

  3. Fry in butter until light brown.

Make the filling

  1. Chop the tongue and sweetbreads finely.

  2. Mix the chopped tongue and sweetbreads together.

  3. Grate the onion.

  4. Chop the parsley.

  5. Add the grated onion and chopped parsley to the meat mixture.

  6. Season with salt and pepper.

  7. Add the beaten egg yolks to some of the gravy from the sweetbreads. Mix thoroughly.

  8. When cool and firm, shape into croquettes.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the croquettes in egg and bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot butter or lard until golden brown and drain on brown paper.

  3. Serve hot with French canned peas.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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 rich, tender meaty texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture with the gravy so the croquettes hold their shape when set.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden-brown outer crust when fried.
Butter
Adds fat for browning the sweetbreads and frying the croquettes golden.
Fat pork
Adds moisture and richness to the lean sweetbreads as they cook.

The step that matters

Shape the croquettes only when cool and firm. If the mixture is still warm or soft, the egg yolks have not set and the croquettes will slump or break apart when shaped and fried. Chilling firms the binder so the shapes hold.

Swap the peas

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, butter, onion, parsley, pepper, 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.

More sweetbread croquettes recipes

Chicken 7 See all 61 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesGreen PeasGreen Peas229 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes