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Salad

Cold Slaw

A chilled cabbage salad dressed with a sweet and tangy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cold Slaw

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 ↓

Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Cut the cabbage finely and place it in a dish.

  2. Sprinkle salt over the cabbage.

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, mustard, flour, sweet cream, and vinegar.

  2. Add butter and beat the mixture until well combined.

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

Serve

  1. Pour the dressing over the cabbage when it is cold.

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. Cabbage + mustardtop 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides a crisp, fresh texture.
Sweet cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the sharpness of the vinegar in the dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the dressing its tang and balances the sugar.
Flour
Thickens the dressing when it is heated, giving it body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Heat the dressing to a boil. Flour thickens only when heated, and it must be stirred well and brought to a boil so it cooks through without lumps. Undercooked flour leaves a raw, pasty taste and a thin dressing.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, mustard, flour, cream, vinegar, butter. 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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