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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with vinegar, mustard, eggs, 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 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 cabbage with salt and let stand overnight.

Make the dressing

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

  2. Beat eggs thoroughly and add to boiling vinegar.

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

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

Combine

  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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and, salted overnight, softens and releases moisture.
Eggs
Thicken the boiling vinegar mixture into a creamy, binding dressing as they set.
Ground mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that gives the salad its tang and sharpness.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs to the boiling vinegar. If eggs go into vinegar that is too hot or added too fast without stirring, they can scramble into lumps instead of thickening smoothly. Beating them well and adding them gradually helps the dressing stay even.

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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