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Salad

Sweet Bread Salad

A salad of boiled sweetbreads, celery or cucumber, seasoned with salt, pepper, and oil, served on lettuce or cucumber shells.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,033 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Sweet Bread Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sweetbreads

  1. Parboil sweetbreads for 20 minutes, then drain and cool.

  2. Cut the sweetbreads into ½ inch cubes.

Make the salad

  1. Mix with chopped celery or cucumber.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Moisten the mixture with oil.

  4. Arrange on lettuce leaves or serve in cucumber shells.

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 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 tender, mild meat that forms the body of the salad.
Celery or cucumber
Adds crisp texture and fresh moisture that contrasts with the soft sweetbreads.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, coating the mixture and giving it a smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Parboil sweetbreads for 20 minutes, then drain and cool.. Parboiling firms the sweetbreads so they hold their shape when cubed. Cooling them before mixing keeps them from going mushy and stops the oil and vegetables from wilting.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, pepper. 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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