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Salad

Sweet Bread Salad

A salad of boiled eggs, sweet bread, lettuce, and a dressing of 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 thoroughly with the salad oil.

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

  3. Add the vinegar last and mix well.

Prepare the salad

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

  2. Break the lettuce into small pieces.

Assemble and serve

  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

Egg yolks
Emulsify the salad oil into a smooth, thick dressing.
Raw egg
Adds body and richness to the dressing, helping it hold together.
Salad oil
Provides fat and a smooth, rich mouthfeel in the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness.
Calf's sweet bread
Supplies the tender, mild, meaty main body of the salad.
Lettuce
Adds crisp texture and fresh bulk between the layers.

The step that matters

Add the raw egg and mustard slowly. Adding the beaten raw egg and seasonings gradually lets the oil and egg bind into a stable emulsion. Dumping them in at once can cause the dressing to separate or turn greasy.

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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