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Sweetbread and Cucumber Salad

A salad of parboiled sweetbreads and diced cucumber tossed with cream dressing, served on lettuce or cucumber cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweetbread and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the sweetbreads with the bay leaf for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain and let them cool completely, then cut into ½ inch dice.

  3. Remove seeds and pulp from the cucumber, then cut it into ½ inch cubes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the sweetbreads and cucumber together with the cream dressing.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves or in cucumber cups.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Cream + lettucetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,121 recipes

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

  3. Cucumber + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together787 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main substance, with a tender, delicate bite once parboiled.
Cucumber
Adds moisture and a crisp, cool texture that contrasts the sweetbreads.
Cream dressing
Adds richness and moisture, coating the diced pieces so the salad holds together.

The step that matters

Cool the sweetbreads completely before dicing. Warm sweetbreads are soft and crumble when cut, giving ragged pieces. Cooling firms the tissue so the dice stays neat, and it keeps the cream dressing from thinning and separating when mixed.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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