Name: Swekt-bread Salad
Ingredients: 1 pair sweetbreads; 2 tablespoons vinegar; ½ cup mayonnaise dressing; ¼ teaspoon white pepper or paprika; 1 head lettuce; capers for garnish

Why it works: Lettuce and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 372 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Swekt-bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the sweetbreads and cook until tender.
Cut the sweetbreads into small dice.
Chop green pepper finely and mix with the sweetbreads.
Serve the mixture on lettuce leaves with mayonnaise dressing.
Garnish with capers.

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.

Lettuce + caperstop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Vinegar + lettucetop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,370 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + caperstop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,453 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Vinegar + white peppertop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,154 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
White pepper + lettucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together208 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).