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Salad

Corn Salad

A salad of boiled corn, cabbage, peppers, onions, sweetened with brown sugar and vinegar, seasoned with mustard and mixed spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Corn Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the corn for 30 minutes.

  2. Chop the cabbage, green peppers, red peppers, and onions.

Combine and season

  1. In a large bowl, combine the chopped vegetables with the boiled corn.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the brown sugar, ground mustard, mixed spice, and vinegar.

  3. Pour the mixture over the vegetables and stir well.

  4. Add salt to taste.

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

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

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

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

  3. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  4. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet corn
Provides sweetness and a tender, crisp-soft bite to the salad.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the salad.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Onions
Contribute pungent aroma and savoury body to the mixture.
Cabbage
Adds crunchy texture and bulk to the salad.
Ground mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavour that complements the vinegar and sugar.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

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