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Salad

Sweet-bread Salad

A salad of veal sweetbreads, celery or peas, optional apple, served with mayonnaise or cooked dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and apple are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,155 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Sweet-bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Soak veal sweetbreads in cold water, then in cold salt water for 1 hour.

  2. Wash veal sweetbreads thoroughly, then parboil them in cold salted water until tender.

  3. Cool the sweetbreads in cold water, then remove dark and ragged parts by hand.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the sweetbreads with celery or peas and optional chopped apple.

  2. Serve the salad with mayonnaise or cooked dressing.

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 + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Bread + appletop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Bread + celerytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,110 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).

  5. Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal sweetbreads
Provide the tender, mild meat that forms the main body of the salad.
Celery or peas
Add crisp texture and freshness that contrast with the soft sweetbreads.
Mayonnaise or cooked dressing
Adds moisture and richness, binding the salad together.

The step that matters

Removing dark and ragged parts after cooling. Dark and ragged portions of sweetbreads are tougher and less pleasant in texture and appearance, so they should be removed carefully while the meat is cool enough to handle without falling apart.

Swap the apple

The recipe marks apple as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, celery):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Applethe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, celery. 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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