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Salad

Cucumber and Sweetbread Salad

A salad of tender sweetbreads, cucumber, and mayonnaise, served on lettuce and garnished with radish and pimento.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cucumber and Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Cook the sweetbreads in acidulated water with a pinch of coarse sea salt until tender.

  2. Remove the sweetbreads from the water.

  3. Cut the sweetbreads into pieces and marinate them in French dressing.

  4. Chill the marinated sweetbreads.

Prepare the cucumber

  1. Soak the cucumber cubes in cold water until crisp.

  2. Drain the cucumber cubes and chill them.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the sweetbreads and cucumber with mayonnaise.

  2. Heap the mixture in a mound shape on a bed of crisp lettuce.

  3. Decorate the salad with radish, tulips, or stars of pimento and additional mayonnaise.

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. Cucumber + radishtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together212 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lettuce + radishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, meaty main body of the salad.
Cucumber
Adds crisp texture and cool moisture that contrasts the rich sweetbreads.
Mayonnaise
Binds the salad and adds richness and fat for a creamy coating.
French dressing
Marinates the sweetbreads, adding acidity and flavour to the pieces.

The step that matters

Cooking the sweetbreads until tender. Sweetbreads must be cooked gently in acidulated water until tender. Under-cooking leaves them firm and chewy, while overcooking toughens the proteins and makes them dry and rubbery. Acid in the water helps keep the sweetbreads pale and firm.

Swap the radish

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

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Radishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, 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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