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Salad

Cold Cabbage

A cold cabbage salad dressed with a boiled egg, milk, flour, butter, mustard, 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 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 ↓

Cold Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Finely chop the cabbage and set aside.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Add the egg, milk, mustard, salt, and pepper to the mixture.

  3. Boil the mixture while stirring continuously until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot dressing over the cabbage and let it cool before serving.

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

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

  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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and holds the dressing on its surface.
Egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks and adds richness.
Flour
Thickens the dressing together with the butter, giving it body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the dressing and helps form its base with flour.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the flour and egg thicken into a creamy dressing.
Mustard
Adds sharp, tangy flavour that cuts through the richness of the dressing.

The step that matters

Boiling the dressing while stirring. Egg proteins thicken the dressing as it heats, but if left unstirred they can scramble or lump. Constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, flour, butter, 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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