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Sweetbreads Breaded with Tomato Sauce

Breaded sweetbreads served with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweetbreads Breaded with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a batter by beating together the eggs, flour, pepper, and salt.

  2. Coat the sweetbreads in the batter until fully covered.

  3. Roll the coated sweetbreads in cracker dust or dry bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot boiling lard until golden brown.

  2. Serve with tomato sauce.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Bread + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help the crumb coating cling to the sweetbreads.
Flour
Thickens the egg batter so it coats the sweetbreads evenly.
Cracker dust or dry bread crumbs
Forms a crisp outer crust that browns during frying.
Sweetbreads
The main protein, which becomes tender inside while the coating crisps.

The step that matters

Frying in hot lard until golden brown. If the lard is not hot enough, the coating absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of crisp. Too hot, and it browns before the inside is cooked through.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, pepper, bread, 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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