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Sweet-bread Croquettes

A fried croquette made from sweetbreads, mushrooms, stock, and cream, coated in breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweet-bread Croquettes

6 croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine sweetbreads, mushrooms, stock, and corn starch in a pan.

  2. Cook slowly for 10 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Add cream, egg yolks, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Stir for 2 minutes over heat.

  5. Transfer the mixture to a flat platter.

  6. Let it cool completely.

Shape and coat

  1. Divide the cooled mixture into 6 parts.

  2. Shape each part into a cylinder.

  3. Roll each cylinder in bread crumbs.

  4. Dip the rolled cylinder in beaten egg.

  5. Roll the cylinder again in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Place the croquettes in a wire basket, ensuring they do not touch.

  2. Fry the croquettes in boiling fat for about 3 minutes.

  3. Serve with cream or 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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

  3. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Mushroom + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together399 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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, providing the meaty filling.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and set when heated, giving the filling structure and richness.
Corn starch
Thickens the stock and cream so the mixture holds its shape when cooled.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the filling.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer coating when fried.

The step that matters

Cooling the mixture completely before shaping. Cooling lets the starch and egg set so the mixture firms up. If shaped while warm, it stays soft and the cylinders can collapse or split during coating and frying.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, corn, cream, egg, pepper, bread):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Celeryfits less well
  4. Marjoramfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, corn, cream, egg, pepper, 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.

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