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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a creamy egg, sugar, vinegar, mustard, and cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and cabbage 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

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl.

  2. Add the vinegar and mustard, then set the bowl in a pan of boiling water.

  3. Stir until the mixture is thoroughly cooked and thick.

  4. Let it cool in a china or glass dish.

Assemble and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the cream and pour over the chopped cabbage.

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. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Cook and thicken the dressing, giving it a creamy, set body.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the dressing.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and balances the acidity of the vinegar.
Cabbage
Provides the crisp, fresh base that the dressing coats.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture over boiling water. Egg proteins thicken gently with heat but can scramble if overheated. Stirring steadily over a moderate water bath keeps the dressing smooth and thick rather than curdled.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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