Name: Sweet Bread Salad
Ingredients: cold boiled sweetbreads, diced; boiled potatoes, chopped; celery, cut into pieces; boiled salad dressing; heart lettuce, for garnish

Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Cut cold boiled sweetbreads into small dice.
Place sweetbreads in a salad bowl.
Add chopped boiled potatoes and celery pieces.
Refrigerate until ready to serve.
Pour boiled salad dressing over the salad.
Garnish with heart lettuce.

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.

Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,033 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,047 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + lettucetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together322 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).