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Salad

Cabbage and Peppek Salad

A salad of shredded cabbage, green peppers, celery, and a dressing, garnished with parsley and served on lettuce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cabbage and Peppek Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Wash the cabbage and remove the outer leaves.

  2. Remove the center of the cabbage.

  3. Remove seeds from the peppers.

  4. Chop the cabbage pulp, green peppers, and celery finely.

  5. Soak the peppers in boiling water for 3 minutes, then transfer the peppers to cold water.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix the salad dressing with the chopped mixture.

  2. Refill the cabbage shell with the mixture.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

  4. Place the salad on a bed of shredded lettuce.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  4. Celery + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the main bulk and crisp texture of the salad, and its shell holds the filling.
Green peppers
Add crunch and a mild, fresh bitterness to the chopped filling.
Celery
Adds crisp texture and a light, fresh crunch to the mixture.
Salad dressing
Moistens the chopped vegetables and binds them together with richness and tang.

The step that matters

Soaking the peppers in boiling water. Brief heat softens the pepper's raw bitterness and sharp taste; the cold-water transfer then stops cooking so the peppers stay crisp rather than limp.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, celery, parsley, lettuce):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, celery, parsley, lettuce. 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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