Skip to main content
Salad

Cabbage Salad

A salad of finely chopped cabbage dressed with a mustard, egg yolk, sugar, olive oil, flour, salt, and vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

  1. Chop the cabbage very fine.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, mustard, sugar, olive oil, salt, and flour.

  2. Pour the mixture into the boiling vinegar.

  3. Cook while stirring until it thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chopped 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. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify the oil and thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the dressing with starch so it holds onto the cabbage rather than running off.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sugar and richness of the dressing.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard, adding sweetness.
Mustard
Adds pungent flavour and helps stabilise the emulsion of oil and yolks.
Cabbage
Forms the crisp, fresh bulk of the salad that the warm dressing coats.

The step that matters

Cook while stirring until it thickens. Egg yolks set when heated, so the dressing can curdle or turn grainy if it overheats or is not stirred constantly. Gentle, continuous stirring lets the flour and yolks thicken it evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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