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Salad

Sweetbread Salad

A salad of boiled sweetbreads, celery, walnuts, and mayonnaise served on lettuce with nasturtiums and salt wafers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Walnut and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 491 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Thoroughly wash the sweetbreads, removing all membranous pipes and tough outer skin.

  2. Soak the sweetbreads in cold water for 10 minutes.

  3. Drop the sweetbreads into boiling salted water and boil for 30 minutes.

  4. Transfer the sweetbreads to cold water for a short time.

  5. Wipe the sweetbreads dry and mince finely.

Prepare the celery and walnuts

  1. Soak the celery in cold water to crisp it.

  2. Cut the celery into half-inch lengths.

  3. Shell the walnuts.

  4. Boil the walnuts in salted water for 10 minutes.

  5. Transfer the walnuts to cold water to harden.

  6. Drain the walnuts and chop them finely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the sweetbreads, celery, and walnuts together.

  2. Cover the mixture with mayonnaise.

  3. Serve the salad on crisp lettuce leaves.

  4. Decorate the salad with nasturtiums.

  5. Accompany the salad with salt wafers.

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. Walnut + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together491 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Celery + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty texture, becoming tender after boiling and then firm enough to mince.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh crunch that contrasts with the soft sweetbreads.
English walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavor, firmed by boiling and cold water before chopping.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds moisture, richness and fat that binds the minced ingredients together.

The step that matters

Boiling the sweetbreads. Boiling in salted water firms the sweetbread so it can be minced cleanly; cooking too briefly leaves it soft and difficult to chop, while the cold-water transfer stops the cooking.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (walnut, lettuce):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Celerythe original
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against walnut, lettuce. 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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