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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad topped with a thickened sauce of flour, eggs, mustard, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

Make the egg sauce

  1. Bring the vinegar to a boil in a stew pan.

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, eggs, mustard, butter, sugar, salt, and pepper.

  3. Add the mixture to the boiling vinegar and cook until thick.

Assemble the salad

  1. Let the sauce cool, then pour it over the 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. 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. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Thicken the sauce as they set when heated, giving it a creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by swelling in the hot liquid, giving it body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that flavours the sauce and balances the sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat, which gives the sauce richness and a smoother mouthfeel.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that complements the vinegar and eggs.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce until thick. Eggs and flour must be heated enough to thicken the sauce, but overheating can scramble the eggs and curdle the mixture. Stir steadily and remove from heat once it coats a spoon.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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