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Cabbage Salad

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine vinegar, milk, butter, beaten eggs, mustard, black pepper, sugar, and coarse sea salt in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until the mixture boils.

  3. Boil for 20 minutes, then remove from heat.

Assemble

  1. Pour the hot mixture over a half head of finely chopped cabbage.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 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

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook and bind it into a creamy sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the salad its sharp, tangy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the dressing.
Milk
Adds body and mild sweetness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Boil for 20 minutes with frequent stirring. Eggs in the mixture can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred. Stirring keeps the heat even so the dressing thickens smoothly rather than turning grainy.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

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