Skip to main content
Main

Sweetbread Salad

A chilled salad of boiled sweetbreads with celery and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and cucumber are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,745 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sweetbreads

  1. Cook sweetbreads in boiling salted water for 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Plunge cooked sweetbreads into very cold water for a few minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine chopped celery and almonds in a bowl.

  2. If using cucumbers, substitute them for the celery.

  3. Serve the salad chilled.

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. Celery + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,745 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  2. Almond + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together166 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Celery + almondtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together485 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the salad.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and moisture that contrast with the soft sweetbreads.
Almonds
Add crunch and a nutty flavour to the salad.

The step that matters

Plunge the cooked sweetbreads into very cold water. The cold shock stops residual cooking so the sweetbreads do not turn tough or dry. It also firms the surface, making them easier to handle and cut neatly for the salad.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (almond, cucumber):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, cucumber. 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

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesAlmond SoupAlmond Soup60 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes