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Salad

Southern Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad with a vinegar and egg yolk dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Southern Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. In a bowl, combine the shredded cabbage, salt, pepper, and mustard. Set aside in a cool place.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix vinegar, sugar, and flour with a little water. Heat until it begins to thicken.

  2. Remove from heat and quickly stir in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

Combine and garnish

  1. Allow the sauce to cool, then mix it with the cabbage.

  2. Slice the remaining hard-boiled eggs for garnishing.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 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. Mustard + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky base that the dressing coats.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the slaw and balances the sugar.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that offsets the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Thickens the vinegar mixture into a cohesive sauce when heated.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the sauce and add richness and body to the dressing.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent flavor that complements the vinegar.

The step that matters

Stirring the yolks in off the heat. Egg yolks scramble and turn grainy if they meet high heat directly, so they are stirred in quickly after removing the pan from the heat. The flour mixture needs to heat until it thickens, but the yolks must not be cooked hard in the process.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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