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Cabbage Salad

A salad of finely chopped cabbage pickled in a vinegar, mustard, and egg 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 the cabbage

  1. Sprinkle chopped cabbages with salt and let stand overnight.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, bring vinegar to a boil.

  2. Beat the eggs thoroughly and add to the boiling vinegar.

  3. Wet the mustard with cold water or vinegar, then add to the boiling mixture.

  4. Season with pepper and salt to taste, and let it all come to a boil.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the cabbage and stir thoroughly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbages
Provides the crisp, bulky body of the salad.
Eggs
Thicken the hot vinegar mixture and add richness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Supplies the sharp acidity that flavours the salad and preserves the cabbage.
Ground mustard
Adds pungent flavour and helps emulsify the dressing.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs to the boiling vinegar. If the eggs are added too fast or the vinegar is not gently simmering, they can scramble into lumps instead of thickening smoothly. Beating them thoroughly first helps them blend evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, 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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