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Salad

Sweet Bread Salad

A salad of sweetbreads dressed with an egg yolk mustard vinaigrette, cream, and green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Boil the sweetbreads in salted water and remove the skin.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with salt, pepper, sugar, and melted butter.

  2. In a saucepan, combine vinegar and mustard, and bring to a boil.

  3. Pour the hot mixture into the egg yolks, then add the milk.

  4. Return the mixture to a double boiler and cook until thickened like custard.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, fold in the cream and green peas.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks set as they heat, thickening the custard into a smooth, spoonable base.
Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the salad, offering a soft, tender texture.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the custard and gives it a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and lightness when folded into the thickened custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard in the double boiler. Egg proteins set gently at moderate heat, so the custard thickens smoothly. Too much heat makes the eggs curdle into lumps, so keep the water below a hard boil and stir often.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, mustard, butter, cream, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, mustard, butter, cream, vinegar, pepper. 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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