Name: To Dress Cabbage
Ingredients: 1 cup vinegar; 1 piece butter the size of a walnut; 1 egg; 1 teaspoon mustard; 1 teaspoon sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; 1 head cabbage

Why it works: Mustard and cabbage 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 ↓

To Dress Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

Boil the vinegar in a saucepan.
Melt the butter in the boiling vinegar.
In a bowl, beat together the egg, mustard, sugar, salt, flour, and pepper.
Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the egg mixture and stir well.
Return the mixture to the stove and boil for about 1 minute.
Pour the dressing over the chopped cabbage and mix well.

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.

Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,645 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,081 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Walnut + mustardtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together849 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

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

Swap the walnut

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

Chestnutfits better
Beansfits about as well
Sesamefits about as well
Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, egg, mustard, sugar, pepper, cabbage. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.