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Sweetbread Salad

A salad made from cooked sweetbreads, cucumbers, vinegar, salt, pepper, and mayonnaise.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Cover the sweetbreads with cold water and add 1 teaspoon of salt. Let stand for 2-3 hours.

  2. Drain and cover with boiling water. Add 1 teaspoon of lemon juice and cook until tender.

  3. Drain again and drop into cold water. Let stand until cold.

  4. Remove the membranes and pull apart into small pieces using a silver fork.

  5. Mix the sweetbreads with 2 tablespoons of vinegar, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper. Let stand on ice for 1 hour.

Assemble and serve

  1. Dice enough cucumbers to make 2 cups and let stand in ice water for 1 hour.

  2. Mix the cucumbers with the sweetbreads and moisten with mayonnaise. Serve immediately.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + cucumbertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,991 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, becoming tender when simmered and then pulled into pieces.
Cucumbers
Add cool, crisp texture and moisture that contrasts with the rich sweetbreads.
Mayonnaise
Adds fat and richness that binds the salad and moistens the mixture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetbreads and balances the richness of the mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Cook the sweetbreads until tender. Sweetbreads must be simmered gently until fully tender before cooling; undercooked meat stays firm and chewy, while rough boiling can toughen it and break it up unevenly.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, pepper, cucumber):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, pepper, cucumber. 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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