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Dressing for Cabbage

A vinaigrette-style dressing made with vinegar, butter, mustard, egg, sugar, and salt, poured over shredded cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Dressing for Cabbage

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 ↓

Dressing for Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Sprinkle the shredded cabbage with salt and pepper.

  2. In a saucepan, heat the vinegar with the butter and mustard until boiling.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the beaten egg.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Cook over low heat until slightly thickened.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cabbage and toss lightly with a fork.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Cabbage + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together133 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 dish and absorbs the dressing as it is tossed.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the dressing.
Beaten egg
Thickens the dressing as it cooks gently, giving it a creamy body.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharp, aromatic flavour and helps emulsify the butter into the dressing.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat until slightly thickened. Egg proteins set when heated, so gentle low heat thickens the dressing smoothly. Higher heat can scramble the egg into lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, walnut, mustard, egg, sugar. 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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