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Salad

Cream Salad

A cabbage salad dressed with a creamy vinaigrette of cream, vinegar, egg yolks, mustard, and sugar.

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 ↓

Cream Salad

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the cabbage finely and stir in the salt and thick cream.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the vinegar with the egg yolks, sugar, and mustard.

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cabbage just before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

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

  5. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 provides the crisp, fresh body.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, coating texture to the cabbage.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the vinegar and cream to thicken the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that balances the richness of the cream and yolks.
Sugar
Softens the sharpness of the vinegar for a balanced sweet-sour flavour.

The step that matters

Pour the dressing over the cabbage just before serving. Vinegar and salt draw water out of cabbage, so it softens and turns watery if dressed too early. Adding the dressing at the last moment keeps the cabbage crisp.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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