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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a mixture of vinegar, egg yolks, butter, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cabbage 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

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine vinegar, egg yolks, and butter.

  2. Mix in mustard until smooth.

  3. Chop hard-boiled eggs and add to the mixture.

Assemble the salad

  1. Toss the dressing thoroughly with the cabbage.

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. Mustard + cabbagetop 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. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and vinegar, giving the dressing a thick, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Mustard
Helps stabilize the emulsion and adds a sharp, savory bite.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add chopped egg texture and body to the dressing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad, holding the dressing in its crisp leaves.

The step that matters

Combine the warm-free emulsion before adding the cabbage. Egg yolks and butter must be whisked into the vinegar until smooth so the dressing emulsifies. If the mixture stays separated or lumpy, the dressing will pool at the bottom instead of coating the cabbage evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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