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Salad

Onion and Cabbage Salad

A salad of thinly sliced cabbage and onion dressed with a bacon, vinegar, and water mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Onion and Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Cut the cabbage into very thin slices and soak in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Peel and slice the onion, then soak in another bowl of cold water.

  3. Drain the cabbage and onion in a colander.

Make the bacon dressing

  1. In a frying pan, cook the bacon until the grease is rendered, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Add vinegar and water to the pan with bacon and bring to a boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the cabbage and onion in a serving dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pour the bacon mixture over the top.

  2. Cover the dish to retain steam for a few minutes before serving.

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. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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 provides a crisp, tender texture.
Onion
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour that mellows somewhat when soaked in cold water.
Bacon
Its rendered fat carries flavour and coats the vegetables, while the pieces add savoury richness.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the salad and balances the fatty bacon.

The step that matters

Cooking the bacon without burning it. Rendering the bacon slowly melts out its fat while keeping the pieces from scorching. Burnt bacon turns bitter and can taint the whole dressing.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Radishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, 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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