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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A salad of shredded cabbage dressed with a vinaigrette of vinegar, sugar, cream, mustard, and beaten eggs.

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

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave the cabbage into small strips.

  2. Beat the egg yolks in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Add vinegar, sugar, cream, mustard, salt, and pepper to the egg yolks and mix the ingredients.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs rapidly.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the cabbage and toss the cabbage with a fork.

  2. Garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs if desired.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the crisp, bulky body of the salad.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the dressing, and the beaten eggs set into a creamy texture when heated.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the dressing.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the dressing a smoother, richer body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs rapidly. Adding hot mixture-to-egg too slowly or without constant stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps. Rapid stirring spreads the heat evenly so the eggs thicken into a smooth, cohesive dressing.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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