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Salad

Red Cabbage Salad

A salad of shredded red cabbage and hard‑boiled eggs dressed with oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,645 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Red Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage leaves into fine shreds.

  2. Wash the shreds in cold water and drain them on a napkin.

Make and combine the salad

  1. Place the cabbage in a salad bowl and add the finely chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, mustard, and sugar to make the dressing.

  3. Pour the dressing over the cabbage and eggs, then mix well.

  4. Arrange the salad and garnish with 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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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

Red cabbage
Forms the crisp, shredded bulk of the salad and holds the dressing.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add creamy richness and body to the salad when finely chopped.
Oil or clarified butter
Carries fat into the dressing, giving it smoothness and mellowing the vinegar's sharpness.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the cabbage and balances the fat and sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps emulsify the oil and vinegar into the dressing.

The step that matters

Dressing the cabbage. The dressing should be mixed well so the oil, vinegar, mustard and sugar form an even emulsion that coats every shred. Uneven mixing leaves greasy or harsh patches of flavor.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, vinegar, 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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