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Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a creamy butter, flour, milk, egg, sugar, salt, mustard, red pepper, and vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Chop the cabbage fine and place it in a bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the milk to the butter mixture and bring to a boil.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, sugar, salt, mustard, and red pepper together.

  4. Slowly add the vinegar to the egg mixture.

  5. Pour the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture, stirring constantly until it thickens to the consistency of cream.

  6. Strain the dressing and let it cool.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the chopped cabbage and serve.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides the crisp texture that the dressing coats.
Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook gently in the hot milk mixture, giving it a creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with the flour forms the base that thickens the milk.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture so the dressing clings to the cabbage.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its sharp, tangy flavour.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar and mustard with sweetness.

The step that matters

Pour the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture while stirring constantly. Eggs thicken when heated, but if they are exposed to too much heat too fast they can scramble. Constant stirring and gradual addition spread the heat evenly so the dressing becomes smooth and creamy.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, egg, sugar, mustard, 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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