Name: Cold-slaw or Cabbage Salad
Ingredients: 4 egg yolks; 5 tablespoons cider vinegar; 2-3 tablespoons sugar; 1 teaspoon butter; 1 teaspoon anchovy mustard; 1 small head of cabbage, sliced; Celery (optional)

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 ↓

Cold-slaw or Cabbage Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

Beat the yolks of the eggs to a light cream.
Gradually stir in the cider vinegar.
Add the sugar and stir over low heat until it thickens like custard.
Remove from heat and add the butter and anchovy mustard.
Set the sauce on ice to cool.

Serve

Pour the cold sauce over the sliced cabbage just before serving.
Mix in celery if desired.

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).
Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,431 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).
Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together14,067 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + anchovytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,330 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Cider + mustardtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,414 recipes

Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks: Thicken the sauce into a custard-like dressing as they set with gentle heat.
Cider vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the sweetness and richness.
Sugar: Sweetens the dressing and balances the sharpness of the vinegar.
Butter: Adds fat that makes the sauce smoother and richer on the palate.
Cabbage: Serves as the crisp base that the cold sauce coats.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce over low heat. Egg yolks set when heated, so keeping the heat low and stirring constantly prevents them from scrambling into lumps while the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the cabbage

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

Shallotfits better
Horseradishfits better
Radishfits better
Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cider, vinegar, sugar, butter, anchovy, 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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Cold-slaw or Cabbage Salad