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Southern Cabbage

A boiled cabbage dish with a vinegar-sugar dressing, cream, egg, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Southern Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cabbage

  1. Boil the chopped cabbage in a stew pan with enough water to cover it for 15 minutes.

  2. Drain all the water from the cabbage.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate pot, combine the wine vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, mustard, and salad oil; bring to a boil.

  2. Stir together the cream and egg, then add to the boiling dressing.

  3. Mix thoroughly and immediately combine with the cabbage; cook for a moment.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the dish and softens when boiled, becoming tender.
Wine vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the dressing and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing and offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the dressing a smooth, creamy body.
Egg
Thickens the cream mixture when stirred into the hot dressing, helping it coat the cabbage.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and egg to the boiling dressing. Egg proteins set when heated, so if the mixture boils too hard or sits too long it can curdle or scramble. Mixing thoroughly and combining immediately with the cabbage keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, vinegar, sugar, pepper, mustard, cream, 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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