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Cabbage and Vinegar

A cabbage dish tossed with a warm butter and vinegar mixture and beaten egg, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cabbage and Vinegar

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Heat the butter in a pan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg and set aside.

  3. Once the butter is heated, remove from heat and add vinegar.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool slightly, then stir in the beaten egg.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage into pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Pour the warm vinegar mixture over the cabbage and set aside for dinner.

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 + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that flavours the dressing and softens the cabbage.
Egg
Beaten into the warm mixture, it thickens the dressing slightly and adds richness.
Butter
Melted in the pan to add fat and a rounded, savoury richness to the dressing.
Cabbage
The main vegetable; it absorbs the warm vinegar dressing and becomes tender and flavourful.

The step that matters

Stir the egg in only after the mixture cools slightly. If the vinegar mixture is still very hot when the beaten egg goes in, the egg can scramble into small lumps instead of blending smoothly and thickening the dressing gently.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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