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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A salad of finely shaved white cabbage dressed with butter, flour, vinegar, egg yolk, cream, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Soak the cabbage in cold water to make it crisp.

  2. Dry the cabbage.

  3. Shave the cabbage as finely as possible.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour.

  2. Stir in the vinegar and scald for one minute.

  3. Add the beaten egg yolk and cream.

  4. Season with salt and pepper.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and stays crisp when soaked and dried well.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the dressing.
Flour
Thickens the dressing as it cooks, giving it body to coat the cabbage.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the butter and cream.
Egg yolk
Thickens and enriches the dressing as its proteins set gently with heat.
Cream
Softens the dressing and adds a silky, mellow texture.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg yolk and cream. Egg yolk thickens by setting gently with heat. If the mixture is still very hot after scalding, the yolk can scramble or curdle, leaving the dressing grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, walnut, flour, vinegar, egg, cream, 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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