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Salad

Sweet-bread Salad

A salad of boiled sweetbreads, 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
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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 sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads for 20 minutes.

  2. Drop them into cold milk and wipe dry.

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

Assemble and dress

  1. Cut them into small pieces and mix with lettuce.

  2. Make a dressing by beating together the 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

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the salad.
Butter
Browns during frying, adding richness and a golden crust to the sweetbreads.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil to thicken the dressing into a smooth, creamy texture.
Olive oil
Forms the fat base of the dressing, giving it body and smoothness when emulsified.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the oil to the dressing. Oil must be added slowly in a fine stream while beating the yolks so it emulsifies. Added too fast, the dressing separates and stays thin and greasy.

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.

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