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Sweet Bread Salad

A salad of boiled and fried sweetbreads mixed with lettuce and dressed with a vinaigrette of egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, sugar, 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, then split and fry in butter until brown.

  3. Break the fried sweetbreads into small pieces and mix with lettuce.

Make the dressing

  1. For the dressing, whisk together the egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, and sugar.

  2. Slowly pour in the olive oil while stirring continuously.

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, rich meat that forms the main body of the salad.
Butter
Fries the sweetbreads, adding browning and a rich flavor.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil to thicken the dressing into a smooth, creamy texture.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, emulsified into the yolks, gives the dressing body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the oil.
Lettuce
Adds crisp, fresh bulk that contrasts with the rich fried sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Slowly pour in the olive oil while stirring continuously.. Oil must be added gradually so the egg yolks can emulsify it. Pouring too fast causes the dressing to split into greasy, separated layers.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, egg, vinegar, mustard, sugar, 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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