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Salad

Corn Salad

A cooked sweet and sour relish of corn, cabbage, and green pepper in a sugar and vinegar brine, canned while hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Corn Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the kernels from the corn and combine with chopped cabbage and diced green pepper.

  2. In a pot, mix sugar, mustard, salt, and vinegar.

Cook

  1. Bring the mixture to a boil and add the corn, cabbage, and pepper.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes.

Can

  1. Can the mixture while hot.

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. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green corn
Provides the main bulk and sweet kernel texture of the salad.
Cabbage
Adds crisp-tender body that holds its structure through the boil.
Vinegar
Supplies acidity that gives the salad its tang and helps preserve it.
Sugar
Balances the sharpness of the vinegar with sweetness.

The step that matters

Can the mixture while hot. Filling the jars while the mixture is still hot helps drive air out and form a seal as it cools. The vinegar's acidity also works with the heat to keep the salad stable in storage.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Lettucefits about as well
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, pepper, sugar, mustard, 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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