Skip to main content
Main

Peanut Salad

A salad of cabbage, peanuts, and cracker crumbs bound with a thickened egg, vinegar, and sour cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Peanut Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped cabbage, peanuts, and cracker crumbs.

  2. In another bowl, combine the egg yolks (or whole eggs) and vinegar.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt, and mustard.

  4. Stir the dry mixture into the egg and vinegar mixture.

Make the dressing

  1. Add the sour cream and cook over low heat, stirring constantly until thick.

Assemble

  1. Pour the thickened mixture over the cabbage, peanuts, and crumbs.

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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Peanut + mustardtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together102 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + peanuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together79 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a creamy custard.
Sour cream
Adds richness and moisture, and softens the tang of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Flour
Stabilizes the dressing so it thickens smoothly without curdling.
Cabbage
Provides the crisp, fresh body of the salad.

The step that matters

Cook the dressing over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures and can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the custard smooth as the flour and eggs thicken it.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, egg, vinegar, flour, sugar, mustard, 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.

More peanut salad recipes

Banana 6 See all 15 →

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes