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Salad

Cabbage and Vinegar

A cabbage salad dressed with a warm vinegar and butter mixture, folded with beaten egg, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage and Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the vinegar and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Beat the egg and stir it into the mixture once it has cooled enough to avoid cooking the egg.

Assemble the salad

  1. Cut up the cabbage and add salt and pepper.

  2. Pour the warm mixture over the cabbage and set aside for dinner.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that flavours the dressing and softens the cabbage slightly.
Egg
Adds richness and body to the warm dressing as it thickens gently.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, smooth flavour to the dressing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and absorbs the warm dressing.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg into the mixture. If the mixture is too hot when the beaten egg goes in, the egg will scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Letting it cool slightly first keeps the dressing silky.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, egg, 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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