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Salad

Apple and Cabbage Salad

A salad of finely shaved cabbage and apple pieces dressed with celery salt water and boiled dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,840 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Apple and Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Soak the shaved cabbage in celery water (water mixed with celery salt) for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the cabbage and dry it on a soft towel.

Assemble the salad

  1. Combine the cabbage with the apple pieces.

  2. Mix in the boiled dressing.

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 + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Celery + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Cabbage + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 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

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, crunchy base of the salad.
Apple
Adds sweetness and a juicy, crisp contrast to the cabbage.
Boiled dressing
Adds moisture and flavor that coats the cabbage and apple.

The step that matters

Drying the cabbage thoroughly. Leftover water on the cabbage thins the dressing and makes the salad soggy. Drying the shreds well lets the dressing cling and keeps the crunch.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, celery):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, celery. 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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