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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a creamy custard-like sauce made from cream, vinegar, egg, mustard, butter, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix cream, vinegar, egg, mustard, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir continuously over medium heat until the mixture boils and becomes smooth like custard.

Assemble

  1. Pour the hot mixture 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. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Its proteins set as the mixture heats, thickening it into a smooth, custard-like dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and a mild, smooth body to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the cream and egg.
Mustard
Adds sharp, savory flavor that complements the vinegar and cream.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder mouthfeel and smoother texture in the dressing.
Chopped cabbage
Forms the main body of the salad and carries the warm dressing.

The step that matters

Stir continuously over medium heat. Egg proteins set quickly when heated. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the egg from scrambling, so the mixture thickens into a smooth custard.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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