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Sweetbread Salad

A salad of veal sweetbreads, mushrooms, peas, mayonnaise, pickle, and lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Peas and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,293 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads thoroughly and place them in boiling water with the bay leaf, cloves, lemon slice, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly for 45 minutes.

  3. Transfer to ice water until cold, then remove the skin and break into pieces.

Assemble and serve

  1. Dry the mushrooms and cut them in half if too large.

  2. Combine the sweetbreads, mushrooms, and peas with the mayonnaise and chopped pickle.

  3. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

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. Peas + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Clove + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Mushroom + peastop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together890 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and moisture, binding the salad together.
Button mushrooms
Add a soft, earthy bite that complements the sweetbreads.
French peas
Add sweetness and a tender texture to the salad.
Chopped pickle
Adds acidity and a sharp contrast to the rich mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Cook slowly for 45 minutes. Gentle simmering keeps sweetbreads tender and prevents the outside from toughening or breaking apart. Boiling hard can make the delicate meat firm and rubbery.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mushroom, peas, lemon, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mushroom, peas, lemon, lettuce. 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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