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Sweetbread Salad

A salad of tender sweetbreads, cucumbers, and a dressing of vinegar, lemon juice, 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, add 1 teaspoon of salt, and let stand for 2-3 hours.

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

  3. Drain again, drop into cold water, and let stand until cold.

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

Make the salad

  1. Mix sweetbreads, vinegar, ½ teaspoon of salt, and ¼ teaspoon of pepper.

  2. Let stand on ice for 1 hour.

  3. Dice cucumbers to make 2 cups.

  4. Let stand in ice water for 1 hour.

  5. Season mayonnaise with ¼ teaspoon of salt.

  6. Mix half with sweetbreads and cucumbers.

  7. Arrange in a salad bowl and pour the remaining dressing on top.

  8. 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
Provide the tender, mild meat that forms the body of the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetbreads and balances the rich mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise
Supplies fat and creaminess that coat the pieces and bind the salad.
Cucumbers
Add cool, crisp texture and moisture to the salad.

The step that matters

Cooking the sweetbreads until tender. Sweetbreads turn firm and rubbery if overcooked, and undercooking leaves them tough. Cooking gently in water until just tender keeps the meat soft and easy to pull apart.

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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