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Cabbage Salad

A cooked cabbage salad made with vinegar, butter, eggs, cream, sugar, salt, cornstarch, horseradish, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and horseradish match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 481 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped cabbage and vinegar.

  2. Add the butter and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and cream.

  4. Add sugar, salt, cornstarch, horseradish, and black pepper. Stir briskly until it boils.

Finish the salad

  1. Pour the mixture over the hot cabbage and mix 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 + horseradishtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together481 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Walnut + horseradishtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 soaks up the warm dressing.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a creamy body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the cream and sugar.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Cornstarch
Thickens the dressing and helps keep it from splitting.

The step that matters

Stir briskly until it boils. Egg and cream mixtures can curdle or turn grainy if overheated or left unstirred. Constant stirring keeps heat even, while cornstarch helps the dressing thicken smoothly as it reaches a boil.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, walnut, butter, egg, cream, sugar, horseradish. 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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