Name: Sweet Bread Salad
Ingredients: sweetbreads; salt; ice water; butter; spinach; eggs

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Sweet Bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Boil sweetbreads in salted water for 15 minutes.
Remove all membrane and bloody parts.
Soak in ice water for 10 minutes.
Cover sweetbreads with Cream Dressing No. 1.
Place a hollow mold of buttered cold spinach on a plate.
Put sweetbreads in the center and garnish with sliced eggs.

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.

Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,323 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + spinachtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,583 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).