Skip to main content
Salad

Cabbage Salad

A chilled cabbage salad with sweet red pepper, grapes, and a creamy dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cabbage and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 622 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salad

  1. Combine the chopped cabbage and sweet red pepper in a bowl. Chill the mixture.

  2. Just before serving, add the seeded Malaga grapes.

Make the dressing

  1. In a separate bowl, whip together the cream, sugar, salt, paprika, and vinegar.

Serve

  1. Serve the salad in lettuce leaves and drizzle with the dressing.

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 + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 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. Pepper + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,037 recipes

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + grapetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,909 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 crisp, bulky body of the salad.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the dressing, softening the sharp vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dressing, offsetting the acidity of the vinegar.
Malaga grapes
Add juicy sweetness and a contrast in texture to the cabbage.

The step that matters

Just before serving, add the grapes. Grapes release juice and cabbage wilts when salted or dressed for long, so adding the grapes late keeps the salad crisp and the grapes firm and fresh.

Swap the grape

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Grapethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, cream, sugar, vinegar, lettuce. 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