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Salad

Oabbage Salad

A salad of shredded cabbage, peppers, and celery dressed with a creamy egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Oabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Shave the cabbage and chop the green peppers and celery.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine egg yolks, salt, sugar, and butter.

  2. Place the bowl over boiling water and stir until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and add vinegar; let cool.

  4. Once cool, stir in the cream.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad on lettuce leaves.

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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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.
Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they cook and set over gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and helps make the cooked dressing smooth.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sugar.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk mixture over boiling water until thickened. Egg yolks thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. If the mixture gets too hot or is not stirred constantly, it can curdle or scramble, so keep the heat gentle and stir steadily.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, celery, egg, sugar, butter, vinegar, 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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