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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with an egg, butter, and cream mixture, flavored with olives, nuts, pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Shred and slice the cabbage finely.

  2. Season the cabbage with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sugar to taste.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, beat the egg lightly and add the butter and cream.

  2. Boil the mixture, then add the chopped nuts.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cabbage.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves garnished with slices of beet pickles.

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. Olive + walnuttop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,087 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 its crisp, fresh texture.
Egg
Thickens the dressing when heated, giving it body and a smooth, creamy texture.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the dressing's flavour and mouthfeel.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Chopped nuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour to the salad.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture after adding the egg, butter and cream. Egg proteins thicken as they heat, but if the mixture boils too hard or too long it can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat controlled so the dressing stays smooth and pourable.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, pepper, sugar, egg, walnut, butter, cream):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, pepper, sugar, egg, walnut, butter, cream. 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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