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Sweet-bread Salad

A salad of sweetbreads, celery, and mushrooms dressed with a mayonnaise-based vinaigrette.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Sweet-bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ingredients

  1. Boil the sweetbreads until dry, then cut them into small pieces.

  2. Wash and dry the celery, then cut it into small pieces.

  3. Boil the mushrooms, then dry them.

Make the salad

  1. Mix the sweetbreads, celery, and mushrooms together.

  2. In a bowl, combine the mayonnaise dressing ingredients: hard-boiled eggs, vinegar, salt, raw egg, pepper, oil or butter, French mustard, and sugar.

  3. Pour the dressing over the salad mixture and toss to combine.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the main meaty texture and bulk of the salad.
Raw egg
Thickens and emulsifies the dressing, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a soft, creamy texture and body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Oil or butter
Adds fat that gives the dressing smoothness and richness.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Drying the sweetbreads, celery and mushrooms. Any water left on the ingredients will dilute the dressing and make it runny, so each component should be dried well before it is combined and tossed with the dressing.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Celerythe original

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