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Salad

Sweet Bread Salad

A salad of boiled sweetbreads, mayonnaise, lettuce, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Wash the sweetbreads in cold water.

  2. Place them in boiling water with salt, onion, celery, and bay leaf.

  3. Cover and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Transfer the sweetbreads to cold water immediately.

Assemble the salad

  1. Once cool, remove the membrane and cut into small pieces.

  2. Mix with mayonnaise dressing.

  3. Arrange on lettuce leaves and serve immediately.

  4. Garnish with stuffed olives.

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. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Onion + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,562 recipes

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

  5. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, delicate meat that forms the body of the salad.
Mayonnaise dressing
Adds fat and moisture, coating the pieces and giving the salad a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Simmer gently rather than boiling hard. Vigorous boiling toughens the delicate sweetbread meat and can break it apart. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it tender and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, lettuce, olive):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, lettuce, olive. 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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