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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a flour, butter, egg, vinegar, mustard, pepper, salt, and sweet cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 flour and butter over low heat.

  2. Add the raw egg, vinegar, mustard, black pepper, and salt; stir until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and let the dressing cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped cabbage with the cooled dressing.

  2. Mix well and then add the sweet cream before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + peppertop 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its crisp texture.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it together.
Flour
Thickens the butter-based base of the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and mellows the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing base.

The step that matters

Stir the dressing until thickened. The raw egg must be heated gently while stirring over low heat so it thickens smoothly. Too much heat can scramble the egg, and the dressing will turn lumpy instead of creamy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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