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Salad

Cold Slaw

A cold cabbage salad dressed with an egg, butter, vinegar, sugar, salt, mustard, and cream mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine eggs, butter, vinegar, sugar, salt, and mustard.

  2. Cook over boiling water, stirring until thick.

  3. Strain the mixture and add cream.

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Shred the cabbage and soak it in salted ice water for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the cabbage and place it in a serving dish, then pour the dressing over it.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Mustard + cabbagetop 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + cabbagetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the dressing as they set when gently heated, giving it body.
Butter
Adds richness and smoothness to the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that balances the richness and sweetness of the dressing.
Cream
Adds moisture and mellow richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Cabbage
Forms the crisp base that the dressing coats.

The step that matters

Cook over boiling water, stirring until thick. Egg proteins set when heated, so gentle, constant stirring over simmering water thickens the dressing evenly. Too much heat or no stirring can scramble the eggs into lumps.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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