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Cabbage Salad with Cream, American Style

A chilled cabbage salad dressed with a creamy mixture of butter, egg yolks, milk, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad with Cream, American Style

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Bring the white wine vinegar to a boil in a saucepan.

  2. Add the butter, salt, pepper, and powdered sugar to the boiling vinegar.

  3. Stir in the shredded cabbage.

  4. Heat the cabbage until thoroughly warm.

  5. Transfer the warm cabbage to an earthen bowl.

Make the custard

  1. Dilute the egg yolks in cold milk.

  2. Strain the diluted yolk mixture through a sieve.

  3. Stir the strained mixture into the boiling milk until it thickens.

  4. Remove the milk from heat.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the thickened mixture over the cabbage.

  2. Mix the cabbage and cream together.

  3. Cover the bowl and refrigerate until cold.

  4. Transfer the chilled salad to a salad bowl.

  5. Shape the salad.

  6. Garnish with beets and quartered hard-boiled eggs.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. White wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds its shape while warm and cold.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk mixture into a creamy coating for the cabbage.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the egg yolks thicken.
White wine vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the cream.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the warm cabbage.

The step that matters

Stir the strained mixture into the boiling milk until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils too hard after the yolks are added, they can scramble into lumps. Straining first removes any stray bits of cooked egg.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against white wine, vinegar, butter, pepper, sugar, egg, milk. 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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