Name: Cabbage Salad
Ingredients: 1 good sized cabbage, chopped fine; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 teaspoon pepper; 2 to 3 teaspoons salt; 2 teaspoons sugar; ½ cup vinegar; ½ cup sweet or sour cream; yolk of 3 hard boiled eggs, mashed to fine powder

Why it works: Cabbage and mustard 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

Prepare

Combine chopped cabbage in a large bowl.
Mix mustard, pepper, salt, and sugar in a separate bowl.

Make the dressing

Add vinegar and cream to the mixture and stir well.
Add mashed egg yolks and mix until smooth.

Dress and serve

Pour dressing over cabbage and toss to combine.

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.

Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage: Forms the bulk of the salad and provides crisp texture.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang.
Cream: Adds fat and body, making the dressing rich and smooth.
Egg yolks: Mashed into the dressing, they thicken it and add richness.
Sugar: Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

Swap the cabbage

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

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Lettucefits better
Cabbagethe original

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