Skip to main content
Salad

Red Cabbage Salad

A salad of shredded red cabbage, hard‑boiled eggs, and a vinaigrette of oil, vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Red Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the red cabbage into fine shreds.

  2. Wash the cabbage in cold water and drain it on a napkin.

Make and dress the salad

  1. Place the cabbage in a salad bowl and add the finely chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix salt, pepper, oil, vinegar, mustard, and sugar to make the dressing.

  3. Pour the dressing over the cabbage and eggs, and mix well.

  4. Arrange the salad nicely and garnish with quartered hard-boiled eggs.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and gives its crisp, crunchy texture.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture that contrasts with the cabbage.
Oil
Carries fat-soluble flavour and coats the cabbage, adding richness and mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps balance the oil.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavour and helps the oil and vinegar bind into a smoother dressing.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the cabbage and eggs, and mix well. Cabbage is dense and the dressing is oil and vinegar, so it must be tossed thoroughly to coat every shred. Dressing added at the last moment and mixed evenly keeps the cabbage crisp and the flavour spread throughout.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes