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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a hot vinegar, mustard, sugar, butter, and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 vinegar, sugar, salt, and mustard together.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

  3. Once the vinegar mixture is hot, add the milk and egg mixture.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the chopped 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.

  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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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

Egg
Thickens the hot dressing as its proteins set with heat, giving it body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the salad its tang.
Milk
Adds moisture and a creamy body to the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, savory flavor to the dressing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds the hot dressing's flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and milk to the hot vinegar mixture. Egg proteins thicken when heated but can scramble into lumps if the mixture is too hot or the egg is added too quickly. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, vinegar, butter, mustard, sugar, 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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