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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a boiled egg and sour cream mustard dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the egg, sugar, sour cream, water, and mustard.

  2. Cook the mixture over medium heat until it just comes to a boil.

Assemble the salad

  1. Season the chopped cabbage with coarse sea salt to taste.

  2. Pour the hot mixture over the seasoned cabbage.

  3. Add pepper to taste.

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + mustardtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving the dressing body and a creamy texture.
Sour cream
Adds richness and tang, and a creamy body to the dressing.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the mustard and sour cream with gentle sweetness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the dressing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad, providing crisp texture to hold the warm dressing.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture until it just comes to a boil. Egg thickens as it heats, but overheating can curdle or scramble it, leaving a grainy dressing. Stop heating once it just boils and keep stirring over medium heat to keep it smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, 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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