Skip to main content
Salad

Cabbage Salad

A salad of shredded cabbage and celery dressed with a mustard, vinegar, sugar, pepper, salt, and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and mustard are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,169 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Take a little vinegar to wet the mustard.

  2. Heat the remaining vinegar until boiling.

  3. Stir in the mustard, sugar, pepper, salt, and beaten egg, and cook until thick.

Combine and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the hot cabbage and mix well.

  2. Let it cool before serving.

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. Celery + mustardtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,840 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 absorbs the sauce.
Egg
Thickens the cooked sauce as it sets from the heat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce with the beaten egg. Stir the egg in while the vinegar is hot and keep stirring as it cooks. Egg proteins set gently when heated, thickening the sauce; if the heat is too high or stirring stops, the egg can curdle and leave lumps.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, egg. 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.

More cabbage salad recipes

Dressing 16Red 11Creamed 7with Eggs 5Boston 4Creamy 4 See all 163 →

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes