Skip to main content
Main

Sweet-bread Salad

A salad made with boiled sweetbread, lettuce, and a dressing of egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, salt, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweet-bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbread

  1. Boil the sweetbread for 20 minutes.

  2. Drop the sweetbread into cold milk and wipe it dry.

  3. Split the sweetbread and fry in butter until brown.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut the sweetbread into small pieces and mix with lettuce.

  2. Make a dressing by beating egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, salt, and olive oil, adding the oil in a fine stream.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 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

Sweetbread
Forms the main body of the salad and browns in butter for a rich, savoury flavour.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the olive oil into the dressing, giving it a thick, smooth texture.
Olive oil
Provides fat and body to the dressing, carrying flavour and giving a creamy mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Butter
Fat used to fry the sweetbread, promoting browning and adding flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the oil in a fine stream. Oil must be added slowly while beating the yolks so it disperses into tiny droplets. Adding it too fast breaks the emulsion, leaving a greasy, separated dressing instead of a smooth one.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, egg, vinegar, mustard, olive):

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, vinegar, mustard, olive. 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.

You might also like

Creamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipesLettuce SoupLettuce Soup8 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes