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Pried Sweet-breads

Fried sweetbreads seasoned with salt, pepper, flour, and optionally coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Pried Sweet-breads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil sweetbreads in salted water until cooked.

  2. Remove and dry them with a cloth.

  3. Cut sweetbreads in half and season with salt and pepper.

  4. Coat with flour.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until light brown.

  2. Alternatively, dip in egg and coat with bread crumbs or grated crackers before frying.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + breadtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,383 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Main protein; parboiling firms them so they hold together when fried.
Flour
Forms a thin dry coating that helps the outside brown and crisp.
Lard
Hot fat conducts heat quickly, browning and crisping the coating.
Egg
Binds the crumb or cracker coating so it adheres during frying.
Bread crumbs or grated crackers
Forms a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.

The step that matters

Drying the sweetbreads after parboiling. Surface water turns to steam in hot fat, causing spattering and preventing the flour coating from sticking and browning evenly. Patting them dry before coating keeps the crust crisp.

“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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