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Cream Salad

A cabbage salad made with a creamy mixture of vinegar, sugar, butter, eggs, sour cream, flour, mustard, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cream Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the vinegar, sugar, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the well-beaten eggs, sour cream, flour, mustard, and salt.

  3. Cook the mixture thoroughly.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the shaved cabbage.

  2. Add the sour cream just before mixing with the cabbage if desired.

  3. Serve the salad cold or hot.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 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. 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy, body-rich texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sweetness and richness.
Sour cream
Adds richness and tang, making the dressing creamy and smooth.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crisp texture that holds up to the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Helps stabilize the dressing and give it body as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture thoroughly. Eggs must be fully heated to set and thicken the dressing and to make it safe to eat. Undercooked egg mixtures stay thin and can curdle or taste raw.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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