Skip to main content
Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with an egg yolk and butter mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Finely shave the tender inner parts of the cabbage.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with flour, salt, sugar, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add boiling water and cook over a boiling kettle, stirring until thick.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in cider vinegar, cream or milk, and butter.

  4. Beat the mixture until cold and combine with the cabbage or pour over lettuce leaves.

Serve

  1. Serve in a salad bowl.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Egg yolk
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and gives it a smooth, rich body.
Cabbage
Forms the crisp, fine-textured base of the salad.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel in the dressing.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the dressing's sharpness.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg yolk mixture over boiling water. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so stirring constantly over gentle, steady heat thickens the dressing smoothly. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the yolk into lumps.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, flour, sugar, pepper, cider, vinegar, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, sugar, pepper, cider, vinegar, cream. 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.

More cabbage salad recipes

Dressing 16Red 11Creamed 7with Eggs 5Boston 4Creamy 4 See all 163 →

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes