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Salad

Chopped Cabbage Salad

A salad of finely chopped cabbage dressed with a mustard vinaigrette made from vinegar, mustard, egg yolks, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Chopped Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Chop the cabbage finely.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the vinegar in a pan and add the mustard.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar.

  3. Gradually add the hot vinegar to the beaten egg yolks.

Combine

  1. Pour the mixture over the 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.

  1. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and carries the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the richness of the egg yolks.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they set gently in the hot vinegar, giving it body.
Prepared mustard
Adds pungent flavour that complements the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Gradually add the hot vinegar to the beaten egg yolks. Adding hot liquid too quickly can scramble the egg yolks into lumps. Adding it slowly while whisking tempers the yolks, so they warm evenly and thicken into a smooth dressing.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

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