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Cream Dressing for Cold Slaw

A creamy dressing made with sweet cream, sugar, vinegar, and salt, served over finely cut cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cream Dressing for Cold Slaw

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dressing

  1. In a bowl, combine the whipped sweet cream, sugar, and vinegar, then beat the mixture well until smooth.

  2. Pour the dressing over the finely cut cabbage.

Season and serve

  1. Season with salt to taste and mix thoroughly.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + vinegartop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,064 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + cabbagetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Whipped sweet cream
Adds richness and body, giving the dressing a creamy, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the vinegar.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the slaw a tangy, bright flavor.
Cabbage
Forms the body of the slaw, soaking up the dressing as it is tossed.

The step that matters

Beat the dressing until smooth. Cream, sugar and vinegar only combine into an even dressing when fully beaten. Poorly mixed dressing can leave pools of sugar or separated liquid that coat the cabbage unevenly.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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