Name: Good Vinegar
Ingredients: 1 handful of raw tender cabbage, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon vinegar

Why it works: Cabbage and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,924 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Good Vinegar

Ingredients

1 handful of raw tender cabbage, finely chopped
1 tablespoon vinegar

Directions

Finely chop the raw tender cabbage.
In a bowl, combine the chopped cabbage with vinegar.
Toss to mix well and serve as a salad.

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.

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

Cabbage: Provides the crisp, fresh bulk and texture of the salad.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that brightens the cabbage's flavour and gives the salad its tang.

“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.