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To Fry Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads are boiled, coated in a sweet milk and flour batter, then fried in hot lard until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Fry Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads clean and place them in a kettle of boiling water with ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  2. Boil slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Transfer to cold water for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove from cold water and set aside to cool.

Batter and fry

  1. In a bowl, mix sweet milk, flour, melted butter, and the beaten egg.

  2. Dip each piece of sweetbread into the batter.

  3. Fry in hot lard until golden brown.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Egg
Binds the batter so it coats the sweetbreads evenly and holds together in the fat.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it clings to the sweetbreads and forms a crisp coating.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the batter and helps it brown.
Sweet milk
Moistens the batter so it spreads into a smooth coating.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisping. Hot fat sets the coating quickly, keeping the inside moist and the outside golden.

“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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