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Salad

Dressing for Cabbage Salad

A creamy dressing made from egg yolks, sugar, mustard, vinegar, and optional cream, served cold over chopped cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Dressing for Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Beat the yolks of 3 eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add 4 tablespoons sugar, 1 teaspoon mustard, ½ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper; mix well.

  3. Stir in 5 tablespoons vinegar or 1 tablespoon lemon juice.

  4. Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thick and smooth.

Serve

  1. Serve cold over chopped cabbage.

  2. If the dressing is too thick, thin it with cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the dressing when cooked, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar or lemon juice.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Provides acidity that gives the dressing its tang and cuts the richness of the yolks.
Mustard
Adds sharp flavor and helps stabilize the emulsion of the dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture in a double boiler until thick and smooth. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently, but too much heat can scramble them into lumps. A double boiler keeps the heat low and even, so the dressing thickens smoothly.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Mustardthe original
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Spinachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, pepper, vinegar, 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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