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Sweet Bread Salad

A salad of lettuce, sweet bread, and eggs dressed with oil, mustard, vinegar, salt, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweet Bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Mash the yolks of the hard boiled eggs and mix in the salad oil thoroughly.

  2. Add the raw egg, beaten well, and mix in the salt, pepper, sugar, and mustard slowly and thoroughly.

  3. Add the vinegar last.

Prepare the salad

  1. Boil the sweet bread until tender, then cut it into small pieces.

  2. Break the lettuce into small pieces.

Assemble

  1. In a dish, layer the lettuce, sweet bread, and dressing alternately.

  2. Slice the whites of the hard boiled eggs and place them on top.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard boiled eggs
Yolks are mashed into the oil to give the dressing body and richness.
Raw egg
Beaten egg emulsifies the oil and vinegar, helping the dressing hold together.
Salad oil
Provides fat that makes the dressing smooth and carries flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.
Calf's sweet bread
Main protein; boiling makes it tender before it is cut into pieces.
Lettuce
Provides crisp texture and a fresh base for the salad.

The step that matters

Add the vinegar last. Acid can cause beaten egg and oil to separate if added too early. Adding the vinegar last, after the egg and seasonings are fully mixed in, helps the dressing stay smooth and emulsified.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

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