Skip to main content
Salad

Cream Dressing for Cold Slaw

A creamy dressing made with sweet cream, sugar, vinegar, and salt, served over finely cut cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Dressing for Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the whipped cream, sugar, and vinegar.

  2. Beat the mixture well until smooth.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Pour the dressing over the finely cut cabbage.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt to taste and mix well.

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

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + cabbagetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet cream
Whipped cream gives the dressing a rich, creamy body and mellows the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the sweetness and richness of the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharp acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well until smooth. Whipped cream can separate or turn grainy when mixed with acid. Beating until smooth helps the sugar dissolve and the vinegar blend evenly into the cream, giving a uniform dressing that coats the cabbage evenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, 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.

You might also like

Cabbage DressingCabbage Dressing9 recipesChicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipes