Skip to main content
Salad

Ma Yonnaise of Sweetbreads

A salad of boiled sweetbreads mixed with mayonnaise, served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 425 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ma Yonnaise of Sweetbreads

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and boil the sweetbreads for 20 minutes. Remove all skin and fibers, then set aside to cool.

  2. Cut the cooled sweetbreads into small, even dice.

  3. Crisp the lettuce by washing and drying it thoroughly.

  4. In a soup plate, rub the bottom with the cut side of half an onion. Add a little tarragon vinegar.

Assemble

  1. Mix the mayonnaise with the diced sweetbreads.

  2. Rub a small crust of bread with onion and mix it through the sweetbreads.

  3. Arrange the mixture in a mound in a salad bowl, surrounded by a row of lettuce leaves.

  4. Alternatively, use garlic instead of onion.

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 + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Tarragon + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lettuce + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lettuce + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, meaty main body of the dish once boiled and diced.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and moisture, binding the diced sweetbreads into a creamy mixture.
Lettuce
Provides crisp, cool leaves that contrast with the soft, rich sweetbread mixture.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds a sharp, acidic note that brightens the rich mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Removing all skin and fibers from the sweetbreads. Skin and fibers stay tough and chewy after boiling, and they spoil the smooth texture of the diced mixture if left in.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, tarragon, vinegar, bread, garlic):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, tarragon, vinegar, bread, garlic. 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes