Name: White Cabbage Salad
Ingredients: 1 hard white cabbage; 2 egg yolks, beaten; ¾ cup cider vinegar; 2 teaspoons white sugar; 1 teaspoon mustard mixed in boiling water; ¼ teaspoon salt; a pinch of red pepper; 4 tablespoons sweet cream

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 ↓

White Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Select a hard white cabbage and remove the outer leaves.

Make the dressing

In a bowl, mix the beaten egg yolks, cider vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, red pepper, and sweet cream.
Heat the mixture until very hot, but do not boil.
Stir in the beaten eggs rapidly.

Dress and serve

Pour the hot mixture over the 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.

Cabbage + mustardtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage: Forms the crisp, bulky body of the salad that the dressing coats.
Egg yolks: Thicken the hot dressing into a creamy custard-like sauce as they cook.
Cider vinegar: Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
White sugar: Sweetens the dressing to offset the sharpness of the vinegar.
Sweet cream: Adds fat and body, making the dressing smoother and more rounded.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until very hot, but do not boil. Egg yolks thicken as they warm, but boiling can scramble them into lumps and leave the dressing grainy. Gentle heating keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

Horseradishfits better
Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits about as well
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cider, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, cream. 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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White Cabbage Salad