Skip to main content
Salad

Salad Dressing for Cabbage

A vinaigrette dressing made with egg yolks, olive oil, vinegar, mustard, salt, cayenne pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salad Dressing for Cabbage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the hard boiled egg yolks with a fork.

  2. Add the raw egg yolk, mustard, salt, and cayenne pepper, then beat with an egg beater.

  3. Gradually add 1 tablespoon of vinegar while beating well.

  4. Slowly add the olive oil, alternating with the remaining vinegar, until the mixture thickens.

  5. Finally, stir in the chopped parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Olive + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Olive + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar, helping the dressing thicken into a smooth, creamy texture.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the base to add body and richness to the dressing.
Olive oil
Provides the fat that, emulsified with the yolks, gives the dressing its thick body.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and balances the richness of the oil and yolks.
Mustard
Acts as a further emulsifier and adds a sharp, pungent flavour.

The step that matters

Slowly add the olive oil while beating. Adding oil too fast before the yolks have emulsified can cause the dressing to separate instead of thickening. Adding it gradually, alternating with vinegar, lets the egg yolk lecithin bind the oil into a stable emulsion.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

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

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes