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Sweet-bread Salad

A salad of sweetbread, eggs, 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 with a fork and mix in the salad oil.

  2. Add the raw egg and beat well.

  3. Slowly mix in the salt, pepper, sugar, mustard, and vinegar.

Assemble the salad

  1. Boil the sweet-bread until tender, then cut it into small pieces and stir into the dressing.

  2. Tear the lettuce into small pieces and layer it in a dish with the sweet-bread and dressing.

  3. Top with the whites of the hard-boiled eggs.

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 egg yolks
Mash into the oil to form a rich, creamy base for the dressing.
Raw egg
Beaten in to add body and help bind the dressing together.
Salad oil
Provides fat and smooth richness that carries the dressing's flavour.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the richness.
Calf's sweet-bread
Main protein; boiled until tender, then cut and folded into the dressing.
Lettuce
Forms the crisp, fresh bulk of the salad layers.

The step that matters

Boil the sweet-bread until tender. Sweetbreads must be cooked through until tender; underdone they stay rubbery, and the dressing will not soften them. Cutting after cooking keeps the pieces neat.

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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