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Salad

White Cabbage Salad

A salad of shredded white cabbage dressed with a hot vinaigrette of egg yolks, cider vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt, pepper, and sweet cream.

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 ↓

White Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select a hard white head of cabbage.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix the beaten egg yolks, cider vinegar, sugar, mustard, salt, red pepper, and sweet cream.

  2. Heat the mixture until very hot but not boiling.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks rapidly.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the cabbage and mix well.

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. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Provides the crisp, crunchy body and bulk of the salad.
Egg yolks
Thicken the warm dressing and give it a smooth, rich body as they set with heat.
Cider vinegar
Adds the sharp acidity that gives the salad its tang.
White sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with gentle sweetness.
Sweet cream
Adds fat that softens the acidity and makes the dressing richer.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that rounds out the vinegar.

The step that matters

Heat the dressing without letting it boil. Egg yolks thicken gently when heated, but boiling can overcook them and make the dressing grainy or curdled. Stirring the beaten yolks in rapidly helps them blend evenly into the hot mixture instead of clumping.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cider, vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, cream. 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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