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Salad

Sweetbread Salad

A salad made from sweetbreads, celery, hard‑boiled eggs, vinegar, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sweetbread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak sweetbreads in salt water.

  2. Simmer sweetbreads for 1 hour.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat 3 eggs and mix in vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and melted butter. Stir until thick and cool.

Assemble the salad

  1. Once cold, chop sweetbreads, celery, and boiled eggs together.

  2. Mix with the chopped ingredients. Add celery seed and combine well.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Celery + vinegartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,627 recipes

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

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, mild meat that forms the body of the salad.
Eggs
Add richness and body to the dressing and bind the salad together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing, giving it a smoother mouthfeel.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and fresh, vegetal flavor to the salad.

The step that matters

Stir the dressing until thick and cool. Egg yolks thicken as they are gently heated in the mixture; if the dressing is not cooked to thickness and then cooled, it stays thin and may separate or not coat the chopped ingredients well.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

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