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Cabbage Dressing

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, butter, flour, and salt, served over chopped cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cabbage Dressing

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 Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, and salt.

  2. In a separate pan, melt butter and mix in flour to create a roux.

  3. Heat the roux and then pour it over the egg mixture, stirring well.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the chopped cabbage and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that stabilizes the dressing.
Chopped cabbage
Serves as the base that the warm dressing coats.

The step that matters

Heat the roux and then pour it over the egg mixture, stirring well.. Pouring hot roux into egg yolks too quickly, without constant stirring, can scramble the eggs into lumps. Stirring while adding the hot mixture gently warms the yolks so the dressing stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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