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Salad

Cole Slaw a LA Touraine

A cabbage salad with watercress, onion, peppers, dressed in French dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cabbage and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,081 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cole Slaw a LA Touraine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Remove the outside leaves from the cabbage and cut it into quarters.

  2. Slice half of the cabbage as thinly as possible.

  3. Soak the sliced cabbage in cold or iced water until crisp, then drain and dry between towels.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the cabbage on a bed of watercress.

  2. Top with the onion, thinly sliced and separated into rings.

  3. Pour French dressing over the salad and garnish with rings of red and green peppers.

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. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + watercresstop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together21 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Watercress + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together533 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

White cabbage
Forms the crisp, bulky base of the salad.
Cold or iced water
Soaking makes the cabbage slices crisp and firm.
French dressing
Adds acidity and fat that flavour the cabbage and wilt it slightly.
Onion
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that contrasts with the mild cabbage.

The step that matters

Soaking the sliced cabbage. Soaking in cold water firms the cell walls so the cabbage stays crisp. Drying it well afterwards matters, because leftover water would dilute the dressing and make the salad soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, watercress, pepper):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, watercress, 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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