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Salad

Sweetbread Salad

A salad of diced sweetbread and celery dressed with a mustard‑cream vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbread

  1. Soak the sweetbread in salt water for 2 hours.

  2. Boil the sweetbread until tender, then let it cool and cut into dice.

Make the salad

  1. Dice an equal amount of celery.

  2. In a double boiler, combine the egg yolks, mustard, salt, pepper, cream, vinegar, and sugar.

  3. Stir constantly until the dressing thickens enough for salad.

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 + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbread
Forms the main body of the salad, becoming tender when boiled.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they gently cook, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.

The step that matters

Stir the dressing constantly over the double boiler. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat, but if they get too hot they scramble into lumps. Constant stirring over indirect heat spreads the heat evenly so the dressing thickens smoothly.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, mustard, pepper, cream, vinegar, sugar. 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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