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Salad

Cold Slaw Dressing

A chilled dressing made with egg, sugar, salt, sour cream, and vinegar, used for slaw.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Cold Slaw Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine the beaten egg, sugar, salt, sour cream, and vinegar.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens and is smooth like custard.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool before using.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Egg + creamtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Egg
Thickens as it cooks, giving the dressing a smooth, custard-like body.
Sour cream
Adds creaminess and a mild tang to the dressing.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that brightens the dressing and balances its richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that rounds out the vinegar's sharpness.

The step that matters

Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly. Egg proteins set as they heat, so if the mixture gets too hot or isn't stirred, the egg can curdle or scramble instead of thickening smoothly. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the texture silky.

“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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