Skip to main content
Salad

Cole-slaw

A salad of finely chopped cabbage dressed with a boiled cream and vinegar mixture, egg yolks, salt, pepper, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cole-slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Boil the cream with the vinegar.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and stir them into the cream mixture.

  3. Let it boil for a moment, then set aside to cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Chop the cabbage finely and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and mustard.

  2. Add the egg mixture 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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 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. 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the dressing as they heat, and their emulsifiers hold the cream and vinegar together.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth body that softens the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness of the cream and yolks.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and gives it a crisp, fresh texture.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour and helps stabilise the dressing.

The step that matters

Let it boil for a moment. Egg yolk proteins thicken as they heat, but overheating makes them scramble and curdle the dressing. Keep the heat controlled and do not boil longer than needed.

Swap the cabbage

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

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

You might also like

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