Name: Cream Cabbage
Ingredients: 2 eggs; ½ cup sugar; ⅓ cup vinegar; 2 tablespoons butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 cup sweet cream; celery seeds (optional)

Why it works: Mustard and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Beat the yolks of the eggs in a bowl.
Add sugar, vinegar, butter, salt, pepper, and mustard; mix well.
Pour the mixture into a saucepan and stir until it boils.
Stir in the sweet cream and let it boil again.
Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage, or reserve the cream, whip it, and pour it over the cabbage last.
Mix in a few celery seeds if desired.

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.

Mustard + celerytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,169 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 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

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, vinegar, butter, pepper, mustard, cream):

Tarragonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Capersfits better
Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, vinegar, butter, pepper, mustard, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.