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Salad

Salad Dressing for Cabbage or Lettuce

A creamy dressing made with eggs, pepper, salt, mustard, butter, cream, and vinegar, poured over chopped cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salad Dressing for Cabbage or Lettuce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine eggs, black pepper, coarse sea salt, mustard, melted butter, sweet cream, and vinegar.

  2. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture is smooth like cream.

Serve

  1. Allow to cool, then pour over finely chopped cabbage.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they cook, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the dressing taste smooth and full.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that complements the eggs and vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set when heated, so over high heat or without stirring the eggs can scramble and curdle, leaving the dressing grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, butter, cream, coffee, vinegar. 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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