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Salad

Cabbage Salad

A salad of finely chopped cabbage mixed with salt, sugar, pepper, mustard, egg yolks, butter, vinegar, and topped with sliced egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Combine the finely chopped cabbage, salt, white sugar, black pepper, and ground mustard.

  2. Rub the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until smooth.

  3. Add the slightly warmed butter to the yolks and mix thoroughly.

Dress and serve

  1. Combine the egg-yolk mixture with the cabbage mixture and add the vinegar.

  2. Serve the salad topped with the sliced egg whites.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Cabbage + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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 provides a crisp texture.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Become smooth and rich, thickening the dressing and adding creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the yolk mixture blend into a smooth dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the yolks and butter.
White sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Mixing the yolks with the warm butter. The butter should be only slightly warmed so it blends into the yolks as a smooth emulsion. If it is too hot or melted, the fat can separate, leaving the dressing greasy and uneven.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, mustard, egg, butter, 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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