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Cabbage Salad

A salad of chopped cabbage dressed with a sweetened vinegar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine sugar, vinegar, salt, and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Boil until dissolved.

  3. Stir corn starch into cream.

  4. Pour the mixture into the saucepan.

  5. Boil until it does not curdle.

Dress and chill the cabbage

  1. Pour the mixture over the chopped cabbage while hot.

  2. Cover the cabbage.

  3. Let the salad stand until cold.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, 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 salad and holds the hot dressing, which softens its texture as it cools.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tangy flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the dressing a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Boil until it does not curdle. The cream is combined with acidic vinegar, and heat plus acid can make dairy proteins clump and separate. Boiling only until the mixture is smooth and stable keeps the dressing creamy rather than grainy.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, vinegar, butter, cream. 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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