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A Nice Way to Cook Cabbage

A cooked cabbage dish topped with a butter, vinegar, mustard, sugar, and egg dressing.

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 ↓

A Nice Way to Cook Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. Cook the cabbage in salted water until tender.

Make the dressing

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add vinegar, mustard, and sugar; bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and mix well.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cooked cabbage.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Mustard + peppertop 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

Eggs
Thicken the warm vinegar mixture into a creamy, smooth dressing as they set.
Vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the egg and butter.
Butter
Adds fat and smoothness, giving the dressing a rounder mouthfeel.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar for a balanced sweet-sour flavour.
Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked until tender to be easy to eat.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs. If the mixture is too hot or added too quickly, the eggs can scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Stir steadily while adding them to keep the dressing silky.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, mustard, sugar, egg, 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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