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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, cayenne, flour, butter, and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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. Boil the vinegar with salt, mustard, sugar, pepper, and cayenne.

  2. Rub the flour into the butter.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the butter and cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture onto a well-beaten egg and mix while hot.

Assemble

  1. Combine with 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. Pepper + cabbagetop 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sweetness and richness of the dressing.
Egg
Thickens the hot dressing as it cooks, giving it a creamy, smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the dressing a smooth, mellow texture.
Flour
Helps thicken the butter and vinegar mixture so it clings to the cabbage.
Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky base of the salad that the dressing coats.

The step that matters

Pour the mixture onto the egg and mix while hot. The egg must be stirred into the hot mixture so it cooks gently and thickens smoothly. If the egg is added too cold or the mixture is not hot enough, it may stay thin or become lumpy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, mustard, sugar, pepper, flour, butter, 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.

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