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Salad

Cabbage Salad— II

A cabbage salad dressed with a vinaigrette made from vinegar, butter, egg yolk, flour, sugar, sour cream, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad— II

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat vinegar and butter in a double boiler.

  2. Beat egg yolk, flour, sugar, and sour cream in a bowl until smooth.

  3. Pour the mixture into the hot vinegar and cook until it thickens.

  4. Stir in the beaten egg white.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over shredded and salted 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the sauce.
Egg yolk
Thickens the sauce as it cooks and gives it a smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Helps thicken the cooked sauce and stabilizes its texture.
Sour cream
Adds tang and creaminess to the dressing.
Egg white
Adds lightness and body to the finished sauce.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and carries the sauce.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture into the hot vinegar and cook until it thickens. Egg yolk can scramble if it meets heat too quickly or cooks too long. Keep the heat gentle and stir constantly so the sauce thickens smoothly rather than curdling.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

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