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Salad

Cold Slaw

A cabbage salad dressed with a vinegar, egg, mustard, sugar, butter, pepper, and salt sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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. In a small saucepan, combine vinegar, beaten egg, mustard, sugar, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Heat the mixture over medium heat until it comes to a boil.

Dress the cabbage

  1. Pour the hot mixture over the 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.

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. 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

Eggs
Thickens the warm dressing as it heats, giving it a creamy body.
Vinegar
Provides the sharp acidity that gives the slaw its tang.
Sugar
Balances the acidity with a touch of sweetness.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother, rounder mouthfeel in the dressing.
Cabbage
Forms the bulk of the slaw and absorbs the dressing's flavor.

The step that matters

Bring the dressing to a boil gently. The egg in the dressing thickens as it heats, but if it gets too hot too fast it can curdle and turn grainy. Heating over medium heat and stirring keeps it smooth.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

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