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Cabbage Salad

A salad of shredded cabbage dressed with a boiled vinegar, cream, mustard, and egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave the cabbage into small strips.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar, cream, mustard, salt, and pepper.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  3. Rapidly stir in the egg yolks.

Combine

  1. Add the cabbage to the mixture and stir well.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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, crunchy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as their proteins set with heat, giving it body and a creamy coating.
Cider vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that brightens the salad and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.
Thick cream
Adds fat that softens the sharpness of the vinegar and makes the dressing smooth.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps emulsify the dressing so it stays smooth.

The step that matters

Rapidly stir in the egg yolks. Egg yolk proteins set when hot, so if the yolks are added slowly or the mixture is too hot, they can scramble into lumps. Stirring quickly disperses the yolks evenly, so the dressing thickens smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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