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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage slaw dressed with a vinegar-based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Boil vinegar with sugar, salt, mustard, and pepper.

  2. Cream butter with flour in a bowl.

  3. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the butter and flour.

  4. Cook for 5 minutes, then pour over the beaten egg.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Mix the hot dressing with the cabbage.

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. Pepper + cabbagetop 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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that balances the sugar and cuts through the richness.
Egg
Thickens the hot dressing as it cooks, giving it a creamy, coating body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and softening the sharpness of the vinegar.
Flour
Combines with the butter to form a roux that helps thicken the dressing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad, giving crunch that holds up to the warm dressing.

The step that matters

Cook for 5 minutes, then pour over the beaten egg.. Egg must be stirred into the hot mixture gradually so it thickens smoothly; adding it too fast or letting the mixture boil hard can scramble the egg.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, sugar, mustard, pepper, butter, 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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