Skip to main content
Salad

Sweetbread and Cucumber Salad

A salad of diced cucumbers and sweetbreads dressed with whipped cream, lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cucumber and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,409 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sweetbread and Cucumber Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cucumbers

  1. Peel the cucumbers and soak them in ice water for 1 hour.

  2. Cut the cucumbers into half-inch dice.

Make the salad

  1. Break the sweetbreads into small bits using a silver knife.

  2. Mix the sweetbreads and cucumbers lightly.

Dress and serve

  1. In a bowl, whip the cream until solid.

  2. Gradually mix in the lemon juice, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Fold the dressing into the salad.

  4. Serve the salad in cucumber boats on a bed of lettuce.

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. Cucumber + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweetbreads
Provide the tender, meaty body of the salad.
Double cream
Whipped to form a rich, creamy dressing that coats the salad.
Cucumbers
Add cool, crisp texture and moisture to the salad.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream and sweetbreads.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until solid. Cream must be whipped to the right stiffness before folding. Under-whipped cream stays runny and thins the salad, while over-whipping turns it grainy and can cause it to separate, especially once acid is added.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cream, pepper, lettuce):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cream, pepper, lettuce. 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