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Sweetbread Salad

A salad of boiled sweetbreads mixed with cream dressing served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and lettuce work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 188 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Pour boiling water over the sweetbreads and let them stand for a few minutes.

  2. Plunge the sweetbreads into ice water until thoroughly chilled.

  3. Cover with hot water, bring to a boil, and cook gently for about 8 minutes until tender.

  4. Cool quickly by plunging them again into ice water.

  5. Break the sweetbreads into small pieces, removing all gristle and fat.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the sweetbreads with cream salad dressing or mayonnaise.

  2. Serve on crisp lettuce leaves.

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. Lamb + lettucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lamb + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together461 recipes

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

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

Lamb sweetbreads
Provide the tender, mild meat that forms the body of the salad.
Cream salad dressing or mayonnaise
Adds fat and moisture, binding the pieces and giving the salad a creamy texture.
Crisp lettuce leaves
Provide a cool, crisp base that contrasts with the soft, rich sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Cooking the sweetbreads gently. A gentle simmer keeps the sweetbreads tender and intact; a hard boil toughens the proteins and can break the delicate meat apart.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, cream. 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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