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Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad mixed with salt, sugar, pepper, mustard, egg yolk butter dressing, and topped with sliced egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 the salad

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped cabbage, salt, sugar, black pepper, and ground mustard.

  2. In a separate bowl, rub the yolks of the hard boiled eggs until smooth. Add the warmed butter to the egg yolks and mix thoroughly.

  3. Combine the egg yolk mixture with the cabbage mixture. Stir in the vinegar and mix well.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad topped with sliced egg whites.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. 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
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides a crisp, fresh texture.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the butter to form a smooth, rich dressing that coats the cabbage.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and softening the sharp dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor and helps stabilize the egg yolk dressing.

The step that matters

Mixing the yolks with the warmed butter. Egg yolks and fat form an emulsion only when blended smoothly; mixing in butter that is too hot can cause the dressing to separate or become greasy, so it should be only slightly warm and added gradually while mixing thoroughly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, mustard, egg, butter, vinegar. 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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