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Salad

Cold Slaw, or Salad Dressing

A cabbage slaw dressing made with egg, sweet milk, mustard, sugar, vinegar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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, or Salad Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. Combine the egg, sweet milk, salt, mustard, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until it comes to a boil.

  3. While hot, stir in vinegar to taste.

  4. Allow the mixture to cool completely.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Pour the dressing over the finely chopped cabbage 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. Mustard + cabbagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,645 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it heats, giving it a creamy body.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base that the egg thickens into a creamy dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the dressing.
Finely chopped cabbage
Forms the base of the slaw that the dressing coats.

The step that matters

Heating the egg mixture to a boil. Egg proteins set and thicken when heated, but overheating can curdle the egg and leave lumps. Bringing it only to a boil and stirring steadily keeps the dressing smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, mustard, 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.

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