Skip to main content
Salad

Sweet-bread Salad

A salad of boiled eggs, sweetbread, lettuce, and a dressing of oil, mustard, vinegar, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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, beaten well.

  3. Mix in the remaining ingredients slowly, adding the vinegar last.

Prepare the sweetbread

  1. Boil the sweetbread until tender.

  2. Cut the sweetbread into small pieces.

  3. Stir the sweetbread pieces into the dressing.

Assemble the salad

  1. Break the lettuce into small pieces.

  2. Layer the lettuce, sweetbread, and dressing in a dish.

  3. Use the whites of the hard-boiled eggs to top the salad.

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 bind with the oil to form a rich, creamy dressing base.
Raw egg
Adds binding and richness to the dressing as it emulsifies with the oil.
Salad oil
Provides fat that gives the dressing its smooth, rich texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the dressing.
Sweetbread (in the method)
Forms the tender, meaty core of the salad.
Lettuce
Provides the crisp, fresh base that the other layers sit on.

The step that matters

Mix in the remaining ingredients slowly, adding the vinegar last.. Adding the oil and liquids gradually lets the egg and oil emulsify into a smooth dressing; dumping them in at once can cause it to split and 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.

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes