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Sweet-bread Salad

A salad of minced sweetbreads dressed with mustard, vinegar, sugar, eggs, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet-bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads and parboil them in hot water until tender.

  2. Remove from water and place in cold water until cooled.

  3. Pull the sweetbreads into pieces.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, vinegar, sugar, and beaten eggs.

  2. Add melted butter and salt to taste.

  3. Serve the minced sweetbreads with the dressing.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Mustard + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Form the main body of the salad, giving it a tender, meaty texture.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook gently, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the richness of the eggs and butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and cuts through its richness.
Melted butter
Adds fat and smoothness, rounding out the dressing's flavor and texture.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

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