Why it works: Cabbage and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,840 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓
Cabbage Salad
Ingredients
Directions
Shred the cabbage as you would for coleslaw.
Add a little shredded onion and some chopped celery.
Mix well with mayonnaise dressing.
Serve in salad dishes.
Top with sliced hard boiled eggs or pignolia nuts if desired.
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.
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Cabbage + celerytop 6% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,840 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,518 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together3,001 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Celery + nutstop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together169 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Onion + nutstop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together114 recipes
Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the nuts
The recipe marks nuts as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, onion, celery, egg):
- Beansfits better
- Chestnutfits better
- Sesamefits better
- Nutsthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, onion, celery, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
More cabbage salad recipes
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