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Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a creamy egg, mustard, and vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg, sugar, butter, ground mustard, and salt.

  2. Stir in the cold vinegar and boil the mixture.

  3. While hot, pour it over the finely chopped cabbage.

  4. In another bowl, beat the eggs and mix with salt, pepper, mustard, melted butter, and cream or milk.

  5. Heat the mixture on the stove, stirring constantly until it thickens to a cream-like consistency.

  6. Add the vinegar and mix well.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chopped cabbage 30 minutes before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds the dressing, staying crisp and absorbing its flavour.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it heats, giving it a creamy, cream-like body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, rounding out the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and richness, softening the dressing's texture.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture until it thickens. Egg proteins set as they heat, thickening the dressing. Heating too fast or without constant stirring can scramble the eggs and leave lumps, so stir constantly over gentle heat.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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